The Year Tech Embraced Fakeness, The First Digital Camera, and All Of Human History In One Hour

👋🏼 Hola!

🔔 It’s nearly that time. Last week the Storythings team went to London to watch Elf for our xmas party, and only one of us (it was me) caught a cold afterwards, so that feels like a win.

💻 We find and share loads of audience research and data at Storythings every week, so we’re going to start sharing an audience insight at the start of every newsletter.

📢 This week - new research from the Pew Research Center shows the huge dominance of Youtube in young people’s social media habits. 17% said they used it ‘almost constantly’. More details in the link above and the chart below. RIP Facebook and X though. 👋🥳 

📕 The Short Story

2025: The Year Tech Embraced Fakeness (10-min read)

Bloomberg’s 2025 Jealousy List (lots of great links)

Found Audio from 1990s Tapes (mostly C90)

The Story of the First Digital Camera (8-min read)

The Resonant Computing Manifesto (5-min read)

How TikTok’s Algorithm Defines You (Interactive Essay)

What Editing Magazines Taught Me About Writing (5-min read)

How Goalhanger Builds Community Around Its Podcasts (4-min read)

All Of Human History In One Hour (one hour video)

📣 5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About Digital Attention (5-min interview in French) 📣

📚 The Long Story

2025: The Year Tech Embraced Fakeness (10-min read)
We are deep into ‘2025 recap’ season, so I recommend this one from Indicator. Using plenty of links to their journalism over the year, it shows just how unhinged from reality tech has got this year.

Bloomberg’s 2025 Jealousy List (lots of great links)
Can you be jealous of a jealousy list? We’ve long been fans of this hugely generous format, in which Bloomberg journalists link out to articles they wish they’d written in the last year.

Found Audio from 1990s Tapes (mostly C90)
I have a sneaking suspicion we’ve linked to this, or a site like it, before, but just in case - here’s a marvellous collection of found audio tapes from the 1990s uploaded to Soundcloud. I really hope Racquel in Barcelona got that message.

The Story of the First Digital Camera (8-min read)
I loved this - the inside story of how the first digital camera was built at Kodak in the 1970s, using hacked together and borrowed technology. It’s a great story of human innovation, but also how hard it was for Kodak to imagine a future in which their entire business model would be disrupted.

The Resonant Computing Manifesto (5-min read)
This has been pinging around newsletters and Slack channels in the last week. It’s an interesting proposal to reset how we approach building tech. There’s some great ideas in here (some similar to a project I’m working on at the moment) but the presentation is a bit faux-naive and portentous for me. Don’t talk about it, just build it!

How TikTok’s Algorithm Defines You (Interactive Essay)
You might need to create a free WaPo account to view this, but it’s worth it, as it’s a great scrollytelling visualisation of how TikTok creates niches to decide what content to serve you. I was quite surprised to see Taylor Swift is an island.

What Editing Magazines Taught Me About Writing (5-min read)
Oliver Franklin-Wallis is leaving Conde Nast, and reflects on what editing magazine articles taught him about being a better writer. All of this is hard-earned gold, but particularly the bit about how you take feedback. We all find it hard, but feedback makes you a better writer.

How Goalhanger Builds Community Around Its Podcasts (4-min read)
As short piece, and a bit of a promo for Apple Podcasts, but it’s always good to hear from Tony Pastor about how Goalhanger built their podcast empire around their The Rest Is… formats. The points about community and audience needs are absolutely spot on.

All Of Human History In One Hour (one hour video)
The impossible-to-spell-without-checking-three-times Kurzgesagt Youtube channel has an incredible new video telling the story of all human history in one long sideways tracking shot. I like their recommendation of leaving it playing whilst you do something else. Or you could just scrub to the last 5 mins, like I did.

📣 5 Reasons To Be Optimistic About Digital Attention (5-min interview in French) 📣
After my talk at the KIKK Festival in Belgium a few months ago, I was interviewed by French Zine Usbek & RIca about some of the themes in my talk. I think, based on reading the google translate version, it’s a good interview. I’m just very pleased they have the phrase ‘merdefication d internet’ in the URL. C’est bon!

💌 Humans of LinkedIn

This week, a human who makes AI more human by making it weird. Iain Tait is a legendary digital creative, from his early days founding Poke to ground breaking work at W+K and Google Creative Lab. He’s now part of the supergroup at FOOD and is, for my money, doing the most intriguing work with AI and creativity that I’ve seen anywhere.

SEE AN EXAMPLE OF HIS MARVELLOUS WEIRDNESS HERE →

Drop us a line if you have anything you’d like us to share in a future edition of this newsletter, or of course if you have any comments or suggestions for us!

Have a great weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh, and the team