Sérgio Tavares
I do my best to write essays, not posts.
An essay is not an update or an argument. It is a movement of thought. I don’t strive to be right, or to persuade, or to govern. I don’t compile statistical arguments, historiographies and this isn’t peer-reviewed. I also don’t offer one simple tricks, turn-key solutions or “here’s why” for designers, cultural students or the general public.
But I do believe I write with pertinence about urgent matters, with a humble, yet quite informed viewpoint on what goes on in our lives when it comes to our digital experience of the world.
Lived experience, signals from the world
In other words, by these definitions, an essay is the only thing AI cannot write. Because it entangles lived experience, subjective notes, theoretical points of view and reflection— reflection in a way that affects the author emotionally. AI can write anything, except lived experience out there in the world.
As a general rule, each piece begins with a phenomenon that feels ordinary until it reveals its structure: a gesture on a screen, a swipe, the push of a button, or a word that changes meaning when mediated by a machine. From there, I follow its threads through design, philosophy, and lived experience.
The aim is not to convince but to clarify; not to simplify but to render break the complex down into intelligible parts.
I write from within the systems I study (technology, design, everyday life) while remaining slightly askew from them, what Edward Said called an exilic consciousness. I had these sparks of insight since, as far as I remember, I was six. I glanced at a family member, driving a car, and I thought: she exists. And it followed: I am born, from all countries, in Brazil. And it persisted: we are made at a scale of billions.
It was like I could see my own backyard from the flight of a drone, that could see all backyards. This sense of estrangement was the distance I needed to realize we are not seeing the big picture —the way we are living, so intensively mediated by technology—with enough clarity. In the least, not with enough frequency.
This distance is not always comfortable. At times, it felt overwhelming. But tamed, it’s a powerful lens, as it allows a strange kind of lucidity: a way of seeing how the tools we make begin to make us back.