Welcome to the Lost Signal
Tracing the deep history of the digital age
For years I’ve been drawn to the lesser-known stories behind today’s online world—the forgotten figures, overlooked inventions, and unseen influences that helped shape our networked society. The Lost Signal is my attempt to continue that journey in a new form: a bi-weekly newsletter where I’ll share some of this work in progress.
To paraphrase Bill McKibben, we live in an age of too much information and not enough meaning—and, almost certainly, too many newsletters. So why start another one, and why now? After wrestling with that question for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s no use raging against the machine. The machine is us.
For a good chunk of my career, I’ve been part of that machine—working in Big Tech, media, and startups (with the odd detour into academia). But recently, I decided to step back and take a page from Benjamin Franklin’s book: to become, as he put it, “a master of my own time.” I’m surely no Franklin, but I aspire to follow his example—to read, write, and tinker with new ideas, in hopes of producing work that might, in some small way, serve the common good.
Over the past several years, I’ve been exploring what I think of as the “deep history” of the digital age—researching some of the lesser-known people, inventions, and cultural cross-currents that helped shape the way we create, communicate, and collect information. Most of this work has taken the form of books, essays, and articles—including my forthcoming book Empire of Ink (Basic Books, 2026), which chronicles the invention of the American newspaper; and my previous books Cataloging the World and Informatica (originally published as Glut). This newsletter tries to expand on this body of work, but in a looser, more personal key.
What to expect
Every couple of weeks, I’ll send out an essay—likely around 1,000–1,500 words—about the intertwined histories (and possible futures) of media, technology, and culture. I may veer off-topic here and there, or drop in a short aside (or “squib,” as nineteenth-century editors used to call them), but the through-line will remain the same: how the past continues to shape our digital present.
Everything here is free for now. I might gently nudge you to pick up a copy of my book at some point, but that’s about as sales-y as I plan to get. If you feel moved to support the work, however, I will gratefully accept (as Dr. Johnson famously said, “No man but a fool ever wrote except for money”).
Mostly, though, I just appreciate your time and curiosity. Thanks for tuning in.
Alex