This is a special audio-only episode of Digging for Fire, where I discuss Brandon Sanderson’s latest Cosmere novel Wind and Truth with special guest Lior Carbis. Spoilers!

There are three kinds of ads.

Heat seeking missiles [BAD]

Data aggregators purchase your data, analyse your location, purchase history, browsing history, app usage, and more, then create a complex profile of you with AI assisted inference. They guess, (and nearly always accurately) your income, hobbies, education, age, gender, and most worryingly, your most likely future purchasing behaviours. Then they sell this data to advertising networks.

These shadow profiles are so incredibly accurate that they’ve given rise to the “my phone is listening to me” myth.

This hyper-focused advertising system comes at the cost of a significant erosion of personal privacy, and maybe even a decline in autonomy.

Thirsty, invasive, manipulative, relentless, these targeted ads are as effective as they are immoral.

As a consumer, you can eliminate 90% of the problem by installing ad blockers on your devices¹, using a browser with tracking protections, and avoiding loyalty programs.

As a business, you can attract a privacy-aware customer base by avoiding targeted advertising. These customers will be more loyal, more likely to recommend, and typically have more expendable income.² Plus, your business won’t be at risk from the fickle nature of search and advertising algorithms.

Shotguns [GOOD]

Display advertising has a much broader spread. It’s a “spray and pray” approach. You can choose the time and location of your ad, targeting the type of audience who is likely to be there. It’s contextual targeting.

A TV spot during a football game is likely to find sports fans. An ad-read³ on the Accident Tech Podcast is likely to be heard by Apple customers. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a direct line to your target audience. More likely you’ll find a crossover (sports fans like beer, Apple users like audio equipment), which can help introduce your product to new markets.

Shotgun ads respect the privacy of their target. Although they’re often digital, they don’t include tracking cookies or attempt any retargeting.

They’re cheaper per view than the invasive alternative, and just as effective when it comes to reach, discovery, and brand awareness. If your goal is immediate conversion, targeted advertising performs better. However, some studies show that this advantage is diminishing due to new privacy laws, anti-tracking technologies, ad fatigue, and an improved variety in the opportunities for contextual targeting.

Handshakes [GREAT]

Seth Godin writes about Permission Marketing.

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

This kind of ad respects your customer’s autonomy. It generates the stickiest customers. Your 1,000 true fans. This is relationship building as much as it is advertising.

If your product has an email newsletter (opt-in, of course), a social media account (that customers can choose to follow), a blog, or a 1:1 sales pitch call, these are all examples of handshake ads. You ask permission, and your target market trusts you with their attention.

Keep ‘em in suspense. Make all the promises you need to. Walk right on up to the door holding all the answers.

Then, zag.

There’s an art to timing a good zag. Too early and you lose impact. Too late and you lose trust. A good storyteller knows how to zig, but more importantly, knows precisely when to zag.

I was on a call the other night with my brother, discussing Severance (s02e03).¹ The episode ends in a cliffhanger and my brother said he couldn’t wait to get the answer next week.

“No way,” I replied, “they’re gonna zag.”

And they did. The writing team pointedly ignored the threads they left dangling, and instead staged entirely new paradigms, motivations, and questions. We’ll zig again next week.

The greatest zag of all time has got to be from Stephen King’s The Stand. If you’ve read it (my favourite King book, by the way), you’ll remember the Walkin’ Dude just walking down the highway, and then zag.

LOST season 2 opens with an iconic zag. You might be able to hear Make Your Own Kind of Music while remembering the shocking introduction of Desmond, going about his morning routine.

It’s well known that the greatest film of all time is, indisputably, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The third act of this film zags hard, into the unforgettable Stargate Sequence, followed by the Bedroom at the End of the Universe. The degree of this oblique leaves viewers awestruck (maybe, sometimes, a little confused too), a zag so profound it carved itself a place in film history.

Good storytelling is formulaic, monomythic. Great storytelling breaks the rules, subverts expectations. If your writing is stuck on what happens next, try something completely unforeseen.

“I love that Facebook shows me the ads I want to see!”

Have you ever come across anti-privacy apologists?

“Privacy is dead. It’s a thing of the past. You just can’t expect a right to privacy in the modern world.”

This is such a dark road to go down. The end-game is a black mirror episode where the ads we see are so innocuous, so inconspicuous that we don’t even realise how they’re manipulating us.

It’s dynamic AI-generated product placement in the background of an Instagram reel, shown when your brain patterns indicate that you’re most likely to be susceptible to influence.

It’s subliminal cues, micro-targeted dopamine hits, and algorithmic content nudges, imprinting a desire before we ever know we want it.

It’s Pavlov’s dog at a global scale.

Building on our previous work toward decoding the perception of images and speech from brain activity, we’re sharing research that successfully decodes the production of sentences from non-invasive brain recordings, accurately decoding up to 80% of characters, and thus often reconstructing full sentences solely from brain signals.

Queue the apologists:

“That’s years away”, “it’s a far cry from anything dangerous”, “it’s still way too expensive”.

Meta is literally researching technology that can read your mind. Is it still years away from being practically applicable? Thank goodness, it is. But there’s a trajectory, there’s an incentive, and there’s a pattern of abusive behaviour.

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

At least this way, the ads are relevant.

I noticed something weird about the things that interest me.

I’m fascinated by emerging technologies. I’m all about the bleeding edge, more than happy to trade software bugs for early access. Give me the beta!

I had an early smart watch, I was early to the smart home (much to the chagrin of my wife!), I bought into VR with the original HTC Vive, and I’ve been excited about LLMs since the launch of OpenAI’s GPT 3. I own two 3D printers (yes, I’m one of those people)!

But that’s not so strange. The weird part is that I also long to return to the early days of the internet. I love black and white film photography. I DM a weekly D&D group (a game invented in the 1970s), which requires no more technology than a pencil, paper, and your imagination. It’s more than nostalgia, I’m just captivated by…

Well, I suppose I’m interested in technologies that have changed the world. Really altered the course of history. Whether it’s storytelling around a campfire, capturing a moment in time on silver halide, or giant leaps forward in our ability to compute using natural language.

New will always be new. There will always be another new after the previous new. But what made it, what sticks around, what outlasts? What’s durable? What’s the reason that rare thing is still here?

Longevity isn’t a fluke. It’s an opportunity to get on board when you missed it before.

Some innovations are mere novelties and fads, but the technologies I love the most are the ones that stick around.

Depending on where you’re at in life, and what kind of processes you have in place, you may dive right into the idea. Perhaps you work on it nonstop, stay up late tinkering, and overall just can’t get put it down. At some point you’ll start to add some definition and try to bring shape to the idea.

Then, all too often, you abandon the thing right before shipping.

This happens to me. A LOT. Too many times to count.

I have so many unfinished projects. I’ve always felt low-key ashamed of my inability to ship. But Joshua’s post has got me thinking. Maybe all my failed-to-launch products are not such a bad thing after all.

Truly creative work requires play. And practice. And probably some other p word to form a nice little alliterative mnemonic. Perspective, maybe? Passion? Persistence!

That project I started but never finished, two years ago (it was called Confetti and it’s such a great idea for an app)? I learned a lot! I learned what kind of designs I like, I learned that I love writing Swift and native apps, I learned how to structure a SwiftUI project, and so much more.

The other project that I started (and fully intend to continue as soon as I can find the time and it’s also such a great idea for an app) lead me down more design pathways, had me exploring other apps and forming opinions on how things should work, and introduced me to various advanced Swift concepts.

Every time I pick up a new idea, I get better. Steps along the path of my learning journey.

I truly believe that the best way to learn is to do. Following a tutorial is one thing. Having an end-state outcome in mind and striving to make it work, well that’s another thing entirely. The former leaves you with a cloned example project. The latter leaves you with hard won neural pathways forged into your brain. You’ll remember the information longer, and building on related ideas and skills will come more naturally.

All that said, it’s probably time to re-read Amy Hoy’s JFS.

In the early days of the cigarette, smoking was considered a harmless or even beneficial activity. Cigarettes were considered stylish, sophisticated, and doctor-approved. By the early 20th century, smoking was so deeply embedded in modern culture that it was hard to imagine a future without it!

Of course, fast-forward to now and, at least in Australia, cigarettes are heavily taxed, not permitted to advertise, or even be displayed in a store. Cigarette packets are covered in grotesque imagery intended to discourage their use. Smoking in bars and restaurants is not permitted, nor is smoking within 10m of a store, beach, or playground. In New Zealand, cigarettes are now banned entirely for anyone born after 1 January 2009!

We’re all physically healthier for it.

But a new health crisis has taken the place of Big Tobacco. A mental health crisis.

The mental health of young Australians is plummeting dramatically, reflecting a world wide trend. All evidence points directly to Big Social.

Yet despite this worldwide megatrend, public and media discourse is muffled. Health and social care systems remain asymmetrically focused on physical illness and disability. Despite the erosive effect of mental illness, public pressure and, consequently, the political will for a response, in proportion to the scale and urgency of the crisis, are yet to materialise.

The answers are likely to involve a blend of socio-economic and generational changes, rising adversity and inequality, and unforeseen consequences of technological advances. The US Surgeon General, drawing in part on the research and advocacy of Jean Twenge, has identified social media as a key megatrend undermining the mental health of young people.

Why is nobody talking about this!?

Social Media is the new cigarette. Our teenagers inhale TikTok and Instagram night and day, and millennial parents are no better. We are, collectively speaking, hooked. Social media addiction inflicts stress, aggression, anxiety, depression, interrupted sleep, and more, but nobody seems willing to do anything about it.

Sorry if I sound to you like an angry vegan raging at an abattoir, but I’ve managed to wean myself off all forms of social media, and I promise you I’m better off for it. For me, this manifests as calmness and patience, but also a sort of down-time productivity that’s resulted in a 1,000 day Duolingo streak and regular piano practice.

Lots of people find inspiration and community in social media spaces. But inspiration is nothing without creative action – and it strikes more readily with regular practice. You can create your own social spaces amongst friends in environments that aren’t littered with ads and algorithmic feeds designed to hypnotise and enrapture.

Why not try a detox period? Keep a log of how you feel (like breaking any addiction, you can expect a difficult period to begin with). It’s time to recognise that, like smoking, social media carries health risks that warrant our attention. It’s time to take a proactive step to manage your digital consumption. It will make you happier and healthier.

Everyone is making it up to some extent. This is the secret I didn’t learn until years into my career. I often thought I was the only one in the room who didn’t know what was going on, and was in awe of the geniuses always surrounding me…

… Often people are making things up as they go along. They’re not sure, things are undefined and squishy.

Thankfully, this is a secret I learned very early, and has steered me true in every stage of my career.

In high school, everyone thought I was a programming genius. In reality, my VisualBasic apps were mashups of code I found online, and my websites usually started by copying the source from another site I liked.

And then I realised, that’s what programming is.

Ask any senior software engineer. They’ll tell you that they started out by copying code (and probably still do).¹

I walked into my first WordPress job interview without any experience writing WordPress themes. I fudged and exaggerated, and got the job. In the two weeks I had before the job started, I learned most of what I needed. The rest I figured out on the job.

I took that “fake it till you make it” mindset with me. Never lying outright, of course, but more than a little overconfident. The key is to trust in your ability to learn.

The principle of making it up as you go along is just a skeptical take on this true wisdom: become a lifelong learner. Rather than taking confidence in your capability for action, take confidence in your ability to learn.

If you can prove to yourself – really back yourself – that you’re able to learn any particular skill, all that matters is that you enjoy doing it.²

Tuesday morning, I’m in the car with my son, and the topic of steganography comes up. Eli is an adventurous kid – he loves playing games involving treasure and discovery with his mates. No prize for guessing how fascinated he was with the concept of hiding secret messages in plain sight.

He wanted to learn a few steganography techniques, of course. I told him about some of the obvious ones. Despite my experience with steganography in the past, I struggled coming up with simple techniques he could put into practice without the help of a computer. Determined to figure something out, I explained Acrostic Steganography. Eli loved the idea. Now he could write letters to his friends containing secret messages.

Much more complicated steganography techniques exist, of course. Eli was keen to learn more. So I explained some of the ARG (Actual Reality Game) games I’ve developed in the past. Steganography isn’t limited to text. Audio can contain hidden messages too. Guessing these often requires software that will allow you to view the waveforms of the audio. Extracting hidden messages from waveforms can involve spectrogram analysis, where images or text are embedded within the frequency domain of an audio file. Simple, but you need to know what you’re looking for.

Images are another easy place to hide messages. Not many people realise that PNGs can have text data appended to the end of the file without affecting the way the image is displayed.

There’s also EXIF data for images, ID3 tags or audio, XMP metadata for PDFs, and a comments sectiion for zips. Hiding messages in metadata like this may not be quite as subtle as other techiques, but it’s easy an convenient. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually check the metadata of files. So if the messge isn’t particularly sensitive, that could work for lazzy and quck cryptograpphy.

Perhaps you could consider the QR code a steganography device, using black and white squares to represent binary data. Of course, QR codes are typically overt in their function, but hidden messages could still be layered in or embedded in other ways. “Steganography diving” requires a curious and adventurous mind, unafraid to tinker, hack, and learn. True mastery, as in all things I suppose, comes through a willingness to simply play.