The last decade (or decades, depending where you set the benchmarks) has been marked by large-scale political and technical failures both catastrophic and insidious, brush fires and slow burns leaving equally scorched earth in their wake. It is not always clear to what extent such failures are in fact features--global finance, the carceral state, and white supremacy don't so much fail a public as they serve a select few. Meanwhile, the tech sector actively encourages and handsomely funds fast, big failures, regardless of who or what might get burned in the process.
At the same time, spaces for productive failure--for experimentation, for questioning, for mistakes that are necessary for basic growth--feel increasingly limited, especially for anyone working in the growing deadly sinkhole known as "content." Stories that deserve months of investigative reporting are reduced to whatever packaging of outrage will serve the moment. Artists' residencies start to resemble business incubators in which the demand