I’m a cultural/digital anthropologist always cogitating about how technology is impacting us humans as a species: how AI, social platforms, and digital life are reshaping meaning, belonging, identity, and the structures we use to make sense of being human. This is where I think through that in public, as it happens, rather than later on. Cause that’s boring. I’m not a futurist, but I look ahead.

My day-to-day work applies cultural anthropology methods to brands, marketing, public policy and digital culture: reputation, competitive intelligence, and reading where a shift in cultural issues begins and evolves. It’s useful context, perhaps, if you found me through the brand side of things (likely via LinkedIn), and it does matter to that work. But it isn’t the point of my newsletter. The ideas here are the engine that revs me up and gets my curiosity firing. My client work is one application of them, but not the reason for my writings.

I’m not an academic. I’m a practitioner who works from theory rather than around it, and I’m currently completing a PhD in cultural anthropology to push my thinking further. I’ve been featured in WIRED, Forbes, and National Geographic, and I’ve done over 150 news interviews worldwide, including CBC News National, BBC Channel 4, and Arab News, among others. I’ve also given 80+ keynotes and talks.

If you’re here for the ideas, welcome. If you found me through my brand work, the ideas are still the reason to read. I NEVER have AI write my articles, but I do use LLMs for research and sometimes brainstorming but that’s about it.