i. Writer’s ■

Writer’s ■ [Writer’s Block] is a menace. It’s the midnight toe-stub of all creative pursuits. But, for this reason—I will not let it exist. It will not be a void to scream into. Instead, it will be an aether to pull from.

Thinking about the words, ‘Writer’s’ and ‘block’, I enacted some wordplay, allowing me to redefine my interpretation of the affliction, instead turning it into a building block in my creative pursuits, rather than a roadblock.

A block is a piece of a greater whole, a representation of a smaller space; within a larger space. It is such, that Writer’s ■ will be a space where I allocate time to breaking down the logic behind the projects I’m developing.

Specifically, this Writer’s ■ will be tackling one of my earliest projects: A fiction-ARG crossover called Swarming Locusts.

ii. Swarming Locusts

This year I was blessed with the opportunity to become a published author through Coffee People Zine’s final, award-winning1, issue; FUTURE.

The story takes place in a world defined by Swarming Locusts2, a grassroots organization that the story is centered around. However, the story exists outside of its own world. In addition to the manuscript, I developed an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that seeks to blend the narrative of Swarming Locusts with the real world through SMS-based interactions.

What is an ARG?

ARGs are not traditional ‘games’. They are interactive experiences that tell stories across a variety of mediums (transmedia). By turning audience members into participants that become an integral part of the story’s progression, which is often gated by cyphers, puzzles, and the like. With this project, I wished to explore how this format could inspire-real world action, and foster dialogue across issues such as corporate control, climate change, and grassroots movements for sustainability and worker’s rights.

The World of Swarming Locusts

The concept of Swarming Locusts started with the world—not the story. As the world-narrative touched on themes that were too verbose and too urgent to remain confined to the pages of a zine. I wanted it to grow into an experience where readers could step into a developing-world, and become part of its gradual evolution—much like ArenaNet’s Living World, featured in the MMORPG3, Guild Wars 2.

For Swarming Locusts, the ARG format was a natural fit. The ‘core’ story explored issues that mirrored real-world challenges, and by making participants part of a fictional resistance, I would hope that the ARG would invite the audience to reflect on their responsibility in shaping the [real] world around them.

Initially was to write the story of Swarming Locusts from the perspective of three main characters, to-which each rendition would be published in a different magazine. Unfortunately, plans fell through — and I transitioned into a solo story + ARG Experience.

This multi-POV storytelling drew inspiration from the film Vantage Point (2008), where a single event unfolds through the perspectives of multiple characters. Each viewpoint reveals new details, creating a richer understanding of the story. Instead of telling the perspective of multiple characters, Swarming Locusts gives expose through various platforms, perspectives, and mediums; each adding a layer of depth to the overarching experience.

iii. Characters & Cliches

Stories are like Ogres, which are like onions4, and Swarming Locusts is no exception. The nature of developing a story within an alternate-future allowed me to explore uncomfortable, boundary-pushing themes while remaining grounded in the familiarity of our own reality.

Vietnam:

If I was going to write a story where a massive, covid-like blight wipes out most of Vietnam’s agriculture.. I needed to pay respect to Vietnam, and turn it into a character with its own arc of devastation, resistance, and recovery.

I wouldn’t let it be a ‘backdrop’ for which everything else occurs.

But why Vietnam?

I chose Vietnam for several reasons, each rooted in real-world politics that amplified the story’s speculative elements.

First, Vietnam is a the second-largest coffee exporter globally, just behind Brazil. However, while Brazil dominates in Arabica production, Vietnam is the world’s leading exporter of Robusta—a hardier, more bitter variety of coffee commonly used in instant coffee and blends.

Since climate change wiped out most Arabica, Vietnam’s existing expertise in cultivating Robusta places it at the center of a global coffee supply chain crisis, making it the target for exploitation and destabilization.

Historical Parallels

Vietnam’s history with the United States includes the usage of biochemical warfare, such was the widespread usage of Agent Orange, a herbicide and defoliant produced by Monsanto, during the Vietnam War.

A parallel is then drawn between Monsanto and Verdantis, both of which are companies with similar roots that destabilized Vietnam for profit.

Since the story draws on these historical atrocities, I wanted to make it very clear that I did not wish to exploit the suffering of a nation and its peoples’ for dramatic effect. Instead, I wanted Swarming Locusts to be a revisionist exploration of resistance.

It is such, that Vietnam becomes a key-figure in overcoming global corporate exploitation, leading the charge in redefining global power dynamics between corporations and individuals.

Avoiding the Western-Savior Complex

Admittedly, I wanted to use Swarming Locust to convey a criticism of writing; trauma should not define a character, a peoples, or a nation5. Certainly, the story begins with the blight—but it does not linger on Vietnam’s victim-hood.

I subvert this cliche by ensuring that Vietnam’s own recovery was driven by its people, not external saviors. Too often, Western narratives frame countries like Vietnam as victims awaiting rescue—a trope that perpetuates harmful stereotypes and reinforces the so-called “Global Safety Police” role of the United States.

Once we get to our other characters, we’ll see that they exist as supporting figures rather than heroes. Yes, they play important roles, but none of those roles are as important as the one held by Mai Nguyễn and her grassroots efforts. In the story, Mai works directly with farmers globally, spreading knowledge and fostering collaboration to overcome the struggles her country is facing.

Even though the first glimpse we see into the Swarming Locust World comes from Elias’ perspective, it is just one piece of a much larger fight that revolves around Mai. Their approach to the problem is also very different. Elias works methodically, working around the United States’ Government, while Mai is on the ground, igniting a resistance that eventually inspires similar movements across the globe.

Huỳnh Nguyễn Mai

Mai Nguyễn is a coffee farmer from Gia Lai, Vietnam. From the get-go, her family’s coffee farm is among the first to be devastated by the blight. Mai’s character arc is rooted in the idea of activism and the resistance of colonialism. After narrowly escaping prosecution in her home country at the hands of Verndatis, she flees to Africa and the Middle East, learning traditional agricultural practices, in-hopes of finding a way to stop the blight.

Traveling into regions yet untouched by the blight, she combats xenophobia and misinformation regarding the state of Vietnam, which plays into the theme of corporate-controlled propaganda. Many view Mai [an asian woman] as a carrier of the disease, as she’s quickly deemed a fugitive. This leads to her being referred to as Locust of the East.

Later in the story, she reclaims this title through the farmer-driven movement, Châu Chấu Bay (Rough Translation: Swarming Locusts).

Elias Walker:

Elias Walker is an undergraduate researcher at UC Davis’s Coffee Research Center. The ‘article’ published in Coffee People Zine is written by him—and is a reveal of his work, and the ethical dilemmas he faced while trying to be a whistleblower in a profit-driven system.

[REDACTED]:

The final perspective in Swarming Locusts comes from a Brazilian coffee importer. For the sake of not spoiling future plans, I’ve chosen to keep this character anonymous, for their invisible hand tolls with coincidence, pushing the plot forward as the binding agent that causes Elias and Mai to meet.

Verdantis:

At the center of Swarming Locusts is a reflection of our reality: Verdantis. Verdantis is the fictional manifestation of unchecked corporate greed operating on a global scale. Through their work, Verdantis sucks the soil dry of resources, depriving crops of the vital minerals they need to survive.

Monopolizing Problems, Engineering Solutions

As before-mentioned, Verdantis is heavily inspired by Monsanto, who had a history of developing genetically modified crops and chemical agents that were used in war.

Being the architect of the blight, Verdantis also ‘solved’ it by developing genetically modified seeds. These seeds however, forced farmers to become dependent on Verdantis’ blight-resistant seeds, further consolidating Verdantis’ control over an already fragile coffee supply chain.

Cliches

Swarming Locust explores xenophobia as a general theme. Within the story, the World Health Organization (WHO) designates the coffee blight as the "Southeast Asian Agricultural Pathogen" (SAAP), a name that immediately shifts blame onto Vietnam and its farmers. This verbiage mirrors real-world dynamics, particularly the rise of xenophobic, racist, rhetoric during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (“china flu”).

This designation as a Southeast Asian Agricultural Pathogen also serves as a convenient distraction for the media, which diverts attention from Verdantis, instead focusing on the further marginalization of SAAP’s victims.

iv. Meta Elements

Designing the Cover Page(s)

The story begins not with a sentence, but with two cover-pages that were designed to be the replica of cover pages that appear on classified documents6 held by the U.S. Government. These designs include bold, almost comical headers, stamped insignias, and various subtext that convey a myriad of information to internal agencies.

I wanted to incorporate these same elements into my own story to build-upon the universe, drawing the audience into the world of Swarming Locusts before they even turned a page.

Albeit, my favorite part of the cover-page is from the third line:

"THIS IS NOT A WORK OF FICTION. ANY SIMILARITY TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, OR ACTUAL EVENTS, IS INTENTIONAL."

The phrase was intended as an homage to the TV series Swarm7, which used the same wording to blur the boundaries of reality and fiction. In Swarming Locusts, I wanted to make the reader double-take, and confront the real-world parallels that are embedded in the story.

Coffee People Zine as Canon

Within the universe of Swarming Locusts, Coffee People Zine is integral to the narrative. In the story’s universe, the zine itself serves as the publication of the exposé.

v. Easter Eggs

Nods to Coffee Culture

Swarming Locusts is full of tongue-in-cheek references to the Specialty Coffee Industry. For example, Swarming Locusts critiques the often-performative nature of mission trips in the industry, while simultaneously weaving them into the core of the story’s narrative.

In the story, Verdantis conducts corporate “mission trips”, promoting clean water initiatives and farming workshops. These trips however, act as a Trojan horse, which only furthers their intentional spread of the blight across previously ‘unaffected’ regions.

In the real world, these mission trips tend to prioritize ‘feel-good’ optics over genuine impacts, as trips rarely address the systematic issues of coffee-producing regions, such as inequitable trade and corporate control of resources.

For those familiar with the dynamics of mission trips in the coffee world, Swarming Locusts deliberately critiques the performative nature of these initiatives while weaving them into the story’s narrative of exploitation.

vi. The Critical Role of Technology

Through a backend built on Twilio and Flask, I developed a setup that allows participants to receive personalized messages and engage with the story further through SMS. This section predominately explores the technical aspects of the project, detailing how Flask, Heroku, SQLAlchemy and Twilio come together to power the ‘interactive’ portion of Swarming Locusts.

The Tech Stack

1. Flask

As mentioned earlier, Flask is one of the backbones for Swarming Locusts, as it provides a flexible, lightweight framework for handling API Requests and managing Player Interactions.

Key functionalities:

• Endpoints for Engagement: Endpoints handle enrollment, updates, and mass messaging to players.

• Request Validation: [REDACTED[ ensures all requests, especially those originating from Twilio, are authentic and secure.

• Error Handling: Flask’s built-in mechanisms allow graceful error management, preserving user experience even when technical hiccups occur (I built this from a point of zero-knowledge, so hiccups occur often.)

2. Database Management with SQLAlchemy

I wanted to track player engagement, and obtain (optional) user data such as email,and personal names. To do this, I used Postgre through Heroku, combined with SQLAlchemy to manage and log participant data.

Key functionalities:

• Participant Records: Each player’s phone number, name, email, and status are stored to enable personalized communication.

• Dynamic Updates: Players can modify their details, ensuring their involvement in the ARG remains relevant and up-to-date.

• Efficient Queries: SQLAlchemy’s ORM capabilities streamline the retrieval of participant data for use in missions, broadcasts, and analytics.

3. Twilio as the Interactive Gateway

Twilio’s messaging API is the primary medium through which players engage with Swarming Locusts.

Key functionalities:

• Enrollment & Interaction: Players join the ARG by texting keywords like “SWARM,” initiating their digital step into the narrative.

• Broadcasts: Mass updates are sent via SMS to keep players informed of story developments or call them to action regarding events.

• Twilio Signature Validation: Requests are verified to ensure they originate from Twilio, blocking unauthorized access.

• Environment Variables: Sensitive information like API keys and database credentials are stored in a secure .env file, outside of the GitHub Repository.

Player Interaction and Engagement

Joining the Swarm

The entry point begins the moment players text one of several specific keyword such as “SWARM” to a designated phone number provided by Twilio. This initial interaction serves both an onboarding process and a narrative hook into the story.

• Keyword-Driven Enrollment: Keywords like “SWARM” trigger the enrollment endpoint, storing participant data in the database and initiating their journey in the ARG.

• Personalized Experience: Players are asked for their name and email (or can choose to skip), creating opportunities for tailored communication while keeping the process optional and unobtrusive.

• Immediate Engagement: Upon joining, players receive a welcome message introducing them to the resistance.

Missions and Player Agency [In-Development]

One of the most exciting aspects of Swarming Locusts is how it leverages interactive storytelling to give players agency to move the story forward. Interactions are designed as branching narratives that adapt based on player choices.

• Puzzles and Clues: Missions often involve solving cryptic messages, deciphering codes, or finding hidden information within the narrative. These challenges are tailored to create a sense of discovery and collaboration.

• Real-World Actions: The goal is to have tasks that encourage players to take action beyond their screens, such as finding physical locations, engaging with social media, or even contributing real-world community/mutual aid programs.

• Consequences of Choice: Player responses shape the overall experience, with certain actions unlocking exclusive story-lines or impacting the overarching narrative.

Media, Evolution, and Metamodern Experiences

Media
Evolution
Metamodernism
E(χ)periences

The media landscape is oversaturated, and algorithms have run rampant, immobilizing society’s ability to think critically—and find information that exists outside ones own native-internet experience.

It’s for this reason, that we need a new way to understand, navigate, and disseminate our relationship to—and with media, both physically and digitally.

memeχ is a metamodern framework, or a "way of thinking" for media analysis and creation. memeχ proposes that culture evolves through oscillations—predictable, cyclical shifts between opposing values, such as sincerity and irony, or analog and digital. By understanding these oscillations, creators can not only predict the future—but develop media that will reach audiences in a more intentional way.

The name memeχ honors Vannevar Bush's memex—a visionary device for organizing and accessing that was explored in his essay, As We May Think (1945). Instead of a hypothetical machine, memeχ builds on the mythological device in Bush’s essay. By developing memeχ into a framework for the human experience, we can adress present and future challenges in contemporry media, including; algorithms, misinformation, deepfakes, and oversaturation of media.

First, we will exlore the foundations of memeχ through its philsophical background in metamodernism—then we will breakdown oscillations to understand the ebb-and-flow of how culture navigates ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Finally, we will provide examples of the memeχ and how it can be (and is) applied to modern-media creation and consumption.

This section provides the philsophical context and general foundation(s) for metamodernism, to which, memeχ is the application of this philosophy [metamodernism].

ii. The Philosophy of Modernism, Postmodernism, Metamodernism

The prefix meta derives from Plato’s metaxis, which describes the condition of “in-betweenness” that is one of the characteristics of being human. In particular, Plato applied it to spirituality, describing its location as being between the human and the divine. Whelan (2008) expands the notion of metaxis further, claiming that “...we humans are suspended on a web of polarities--the one and the many, eternity and time, freedom and fate, instinct and intellect, risk and safety, love and hate, to name but a few”. Metaxis has also been defined as the state of belonging completely and simultaneously to two different autonomous worlds (Linds 2006). So, the notion of humans passing through an interface between the world of ideas and the physical world is over 2,000 years old.

Modernism

Modernism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reaction to the changes brought about by industrialization, urbanization, and the First World War. Modernism is represented by the will to break from tradition and discover new forms of expression that were capable of capturing the reality at the time.

Modernists embodied a belief in progress, innovation, and the power of human creativity to reshape society and reveal universal truths through art.

Key Characteristics of Modernism:

1. Innovation

   • A push for new techniques and styles in art, literature, and music.

   • Examples: Stream-of-consciousness narration in literature (e.g., James Joyce) and atonality in music (e.g., Schoenberg).

2. Exploration of Form

   • A focus on the structure and medium of art itself, often resulting in abstraction and experimentation.

   • Example: Cubism in painting (e.g., Picasso) challenged traditional representations of reality.

3. The Hero’s Journey for Authenticity

   • A desire to uncover the essence of human experience, free from outdated conventions or constraints.

   • Modernists believed art could reveal universal truths about life, identity, and society.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism arose in the mid-to-late 20th century, largely in response to Modernism's perceived limitations and failures, especially in light of the horrors of World War II, which shattered Modernism’s progress in universal truths.

Postmodernists approached the world with skepticism and irony, rejecting the idea that art or philosophy could uncover a singular, objective truth. Instead, they embraced plurality, ambiguity, and relativism, viewing reality as socially constructed and inherently fragmented.

Key Characteristics of Postmodernism:

1. Skepticism and Irony

   • A critical stance toward objective knowledge, grand narratives, and cultural ideologies.

   • Example: Postmodern literature often questions reality and meaning (e.g., Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five).

2. Pastiche and Parody

   • The blending of styles, genres, and media to expose the artificiality of “reality.”

   • Example: Postmodern architecture mixes classical and modern designs without concern for coherence.

3. Rejection of Grand Narratives

   • A dismissal of overarching stories that attempt to explain history, culture, or the human condition.

   • Example: Instead of one universal truth, Postmodernism embraces multiple perspectives and interpretations.

While Modernism sought meaning and order, Postmodernism revealed the chaos, subjectivity, and contradictions of life in a fragmented world.

Metamodernism

Metamodernism, emerging in the early 21st century, can be understood as a response to Postmodernism’s skepticism and detachment. While it acknowledges the failures of grand narratives and the ambiguity of truth, Metamodernism also recognizes humanity’s renewed desire for meaning, depth, and sincerity in an increasingly complex and digital world.

Metamodernism does not reject irony or skepticism—it embraces them. However, it also allows space for hope, authenticity, and idealism to coexist. Metamodernism does not seek to find balance, but instead chooses to oscillate between the extremes of modernism and postmodernism—truth and ambiguity, irony and sincerity, optimism and despair.

Key Characteristics of Metamodernism:

1. Synthesis of Opposites

   • A movement between Modernist idealism and Postmodernist skepticism.

   • Example: Art and culture oscillating between irony and sincerity, without settling on either.

2. Informed Naivety and Pragmatic Idealism

   • A willingness to hope and dream, while fully aware of the limitations of past ideologies.

   • Metamodernism reflects a pragmatic optimism—striving for new possibilities while understanding their imperfections.

3. Dynamic Engagement

   • Instead of fixed viewpoints, Metamodernism encourages continuous growth and engagement with the world.

   • Example: The blending of nostalgia and innovation in media (e.g., the resurgence of vinyl records alongside streaming)

From Modernism to Metamodernism

To understand Metamodernism, it helps to view it [Metamodernism] as a reaction and reconciliation through time:

• Modernism sought universal truths through innovation and creativity.

• Postmodernism shattered those ideals, revealing a fractured, pluralistic reality.

• Metamodernism oscillates between these perspectives, striving to create meaning of the ‘in-betweenness’ while embracing complexity and contradiction.

Metamodern is not the end-point, instead it’s the journey between two destinations. Between point A and B, there are an infinite amount of stops, and such is metamodernism. It reflects, and measures the way humanity navigates the pendulum swing of progress and reaction—swaying between hope and doubt, tradition and innovtion, and old and new.

iii. Oscillations

The Concept

An oscillation is the movement between two points, in physics this is observed through a pendulum swinging between two extremes. The human experience is no different. Just as a pendulum swings between two extremes—so too does culture, technology, and human behavior. These cycles are often recurring, and are always predictable, as they’re the driving force of cultural evolution.

In the frame of meme_x, an oscillation is a cyclical shift in collective values and behaviors between two opposing thought-forms. These thought-forms can be physical/technological (analog vs. digital), philosophical (sincerity vs. irony), or social (community vs. individualism). It’s through identifying, and understanding why these trends emerge, that we can predict the future to understand the fundamental [media] needs of what will come.

Generations and Media: Inherited Processes

Each generation builds on its predecessor, creating a lineage of media engagement that feels almost like an inherited family trait. However, this inheritance is not passive—new generations react, reforge, and reinterpret what they receive, forming an oscilltion between the future they’re born into and the past that molded them.

Example: Growing up in the 90s/2000s might’ve meant you experienced a hybrid of portable CD players, digital music stores, and eventual smartphone streaming. Now, there’s a return to vinyl records—an oscillation between nostalgia for tangible, physical media and the convenience of digital platforms.

Vinyl presented not just a return to nostalgia but also a return to physicality and ownership, with record-digging being its own human-powered algorithm of sorts. In addition, vinyl curated its own community, and exclusivity. Vinyl (much like CDs) offered album art, producer credits, and a series of extras that are lost on digital streaming platforms.

The Pattern Repeats Itself

This same oscillating pattern appears across our culture, revealing a collective negotiation with technology and meaning:

• Photography: The revival of film cameras and the popularity of apps that create grainy, "imperfect" digital polaroids represent an oscillation between the sterile perfection of smartphone cameras and a desire for authentic, unpredictable aesthetics.

• Reading Culture: The explosive growth of #BookTok and the renewed focus on libraries showcases an oscillation between the isolating, algorithm-fed nature of social media and a sincere, community-driven celebration of physical books and shared-community within third-spaces.

• Digital Ownership: Even th rise of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) can be understood as an oscillation. It not only brings out the idea of a sacred, provable ownership and scarcity, but leans into the early internet-days of Neopets and forum-signature pets. From the physical world, it drawns upon collectibles and TCGs (Trading Card Games).

  Conclusion

By observing to become aware of these cultural pendulums, we move ourselves from being passive subjects of media trends to becoming intentional creators and consumers that understand the forces that shape our experience.

Most oscillations, can be understood as an inheritance of the past, trying to maintain, and uphold its relevancy in the present. What may be obsolete to one generation might just be essential to the next. And what was groundbreaking, may too become limiting, especially as new technology inform how we interact with media.

iv. meme_χ for dummies: a framework for creation

While memeχ can be used to analyze culture, it’s really a practical guide for creating media that resonates with audiences. Therefore, one must navigate the most critical oscillation there is: the oscillation between the creator and the consumer.

On one end, you have the Modernist Auteur—the visionary with a top-down, finished product that is uniquely theirs, delivered to a mostly passive audience. The end-product is all about the Auteur’s singular vision. Even if the audience was taken into consideration whilst being crafted, they had no hand in its construction.

The other extreme is the Postmodern Participant, where the lines between Creator, Product, and Audience are all but erased. The audience is no longer passive. Instead, it acts as a fourth-wall breaking force that reinterperets, remixes, and collaborates with the Creator and Product alike, until they [the audience] become co-creators. (Think TikTok Trends, and Twitch/Youtube Culture, specifically Mr. Beast).

This dynamic mirrors a famous concept in quantum physics: the double-slit experiment. The very act of observing [read: measuring] a particle changes its behavior; similarly, the audience's active participation fundamentally affects the art's final meaning and trajectory.

Gone is the age of the celebrity. Now is the age of the influencer/content creator. The difference between the celebrity and the influencer is that the influencer/creator today, quite literally, cannot afford to live at either extreme (Auteur, or Participant). Thus, we come to understand that meaningful art requires a tactful, purposeful sway between the Auteur’s Vision and the Audience’s Engagement1.

David Ogilvy knew this decades ago, as some of his greatest advice came not from the perspective of marketing, but empathy: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

This is a call for the creator to build a responsive relationship with their audience—to oscillate between their world and their audience's, because they exist in a shared one.

The Tastemaker, Curator, and The Experience Designer

So, how does a creative cultivate an experience that exists in this shared reality?

By adopting the mindset of a User Experience (UI/UX) Designer.

Most internet-based platforms obsess over a user’s needs and emotional responses. To understand their users, and how they interact with their platform, companies hire UI/UX designers. The goal of UI/UX is not to design an app that works ‘functionally’, but instead design an experience that is intuitive and purposeful for the intended audience. Those developing content under the context of memeχ do the same, but with culture, making them the tastemakers of culture.

Early on, we must understand that iterative development is part of the process. We must fail hard, and fail fast in our endeavors, throwing wet paper towels at a wall until one—or several, stick. This process however, isn’t to be confused with careless content creation. Instead, it’s the artist’s form of rapid prototyping. A postmodern acceptance of trial and error—failing hard, and failing fast. We can conceptualize ideas all we want, but until we put oru ideas practice, all we’re doing is thinking… About thinking.

It’s very rare that our ideas actually match what’s in our mind, and the faster we fail and the harder we fail, the faster we can learn and catch up to the vision that we have, even if that vision is technically unattainable (because in our head, the vision is ‘perfect’).

This experimental approach requires a mindset that overcomes the paralysis of perfectionism. As producer Kenny Beats advises, you sometimes have to D.O.T.S. (Don’t Over Think Shit). This mindset, although easier said than done, prioritizse action over analysis and momentum over perfection. In Silicon Valley terms, this is what one would call a "Minimum Viable Product" (MVP), with the goal to get ideas out into the shared reality where they can be tested, refined, or abandoned based on real-world feedback.

Ultimately, creating within memeχ means embracing this process:

• Holding a sincere, authentic vision (the Modernist Auteur).

• Designing an experience with deep empathy for the audience’s perspective and participation (the Postmodern Participant).

• Using iterative, human-centered methods to bridge the two (the UX Mindset).

As technology such as generative AI enter our studios and writer's rooms, this adaptive and oscillatory approach—one that blends a unique vision with a profound respect for the human experience—will become more crucial than ever for creating work that stands out as not only clever, but alive.

v. Vannevar Bush and the memex

Development

memeχ took shape during my second year at Georgia State University (GSU) as a project for a Media, Society, and Culture course. Initially focused on media consumption and cultural implications, it evolved into a system for analyzing and creating media from a metamodern standpoint. This approach draws inspiration from giants like internet mentor Camden Ostrander (contributor to the Dissect podcast), whose work in media analysis showed how culture, philosophy, and technology intersect.

Vannevar Bush’s Influence

In July of 1945, weeks before the atomic bombs “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” were dropped, American physicist Vannevar Bush published “As We May Think” in The Atlantic. Bush—an academic leader, vice president and dean at MIT, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and director of the National Defense Research Committee [NDRC]/Office of Scientific Research and Development [OSRD]—was deeply involved in WWII’s scientific efforts, including the early stages of the Manhattan Project.

During World War II, the OSRD, under Bush’s leadership, oversaw the development of technologies that played a decisive role in the war effort, including radar and sonar. However, the OSRD’s most infamous contribution was its early role in laying the groundwork for the Manhattan Project—the top-secret operation that produced the world’s first nuclear weapons.

By the end of the war, Bush stood at a crossroads. He had led science to its most destructive achievement in history, yet he believed deeply that science should serve humanity—not destroy it. In “As We May Think,” Bush reflected on this shift in priorities, urging scientists to move beyond war and turn their efforts toward progress and innovation:

Information Overload

While Bush was concerned with the role of scientists, he also identified a growing challenge: the human experience could not match the overwhelming amount of information being produced. Even in 1945—long before the internet, Bush observed that humanity was creating more knowledge than it could process, organize, or effectively use:

In other words, the tools for managing information were not keeping up with the rate at which new knowledge was being created. Sound familiar? Bush’s observation in 1945 is no different than the issue that plagues us today:

• Content Overload: At this very moment, over 272 TikToks are posted per second, alongside countless articles, tweets, videos, and posts. No human being can consume or make sense of it all.

• Echo Chambers: Modern algorithms curate content for us, tailoring what we see to our preferences. While convenient, this often isolates us in digital echo chambers, limiting exposure to diverse perspectives.

Despite advancements like indexed search engines and AI, we’re still struggling with the same core problem Bush described nearly 80 years ago. It’s humanly impossible to engage with even a fraction of the content thats being created, even within a specific niche. This experience of threading through a consequent maze is consistent throughout the development of technology, which makes me wonder—how much have we really changed?

As described earlier, our interaction with technology is a penedulum; one that swings with increasing velocity until its course corrected; either by time, or by the introduction of a technology that changes our perspective on how we understand all other technology. Examples of this include the computers, the internet, artificial intelligence, and the memex.

The Memex

(Summary below)

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed. —Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”

The slightly-less-longer TL;DR:

In "As We May Think," Vannevar Bush introduced the idea of the memex, a device imagined as a mechanized private library and file system. The memex was designed to solve the problem of information overload by allowing individuals to store, retrieve, and organize knowledge in a way that mimicked our own brain’s associative processes.

Bush described the memex as follows:

How the Memex Would Work

The memex resembled a desk outfitted with advanced technology for its time:

• Slanted translucent screens for displaying information.

• A keyboard, buttons, and levers to navigate and organize content.

• Microfilm-based storage, capable of holding vast amounts of data without running out of space.

Users could add information in various ways:

• Purchasing microfilm content, such as books, newspapers, and correspondence, for direct insertion.

• Creating new entries by photographing handwritten notes, photos, or documents onto blank microfilm using a lever.

The most revolutionary feature of the memex was its ability to create associative trails. Much like how our brains form connections between memories, the memex allowed users to link related pieces of information. These trails could then be revisited, shared, or expanded upon, transforming static data into dynamic, meaningful networks of knowledge.

Why the Memex Matters Today

Bush’s vision for the memex was revolutionary not just for its time but for what it anticipated:

• The hyperlink: Associative trails are the foundation of how we navigate the internet today.

• Cloud storage and digital libraries: Systems that allow us to store and access vast amounts of information.

• AI-driven recommendations: Tools that attempt to curate content, though often imperfectly, to help us manage the overwhelming flow of information.

While the memex was never built, its spirit—the urgent need it was meant to address—is more relevant than ever.

Thus, memeχ is the metamodern answer to Bush's postmodern challenge. It proposes that the most powerful associative trails are not mechanical, or algorithmic, but human-centric. Where technology alone cannot solve our problems, I believe human-centric computer design will advance us further as a species.

Naturally, new innovations create new opportunities and new challenges, further complicating the maze Vannevar Bush mentioned. memeχ offers a compass for that journey—a way to create with purpose, to consume with awareness, and to find clarity within chaos.

It is with memeχ, that I hope to aid in developing systems that improve understanding nd connection across the human race; rather than further obfuscating our fragile cultural borders.