Since we began Real Life in the summer of 2016, we’ve run nearly 500 essays across a range of topics, with a particular focus on the personal and cultural implications of living with technology. Our aim is not to track the news cycle so much as the longstanding social issues that inform and transcend it, and how new forms and different relationships to technology affect them.
We wanted to make it easier to read and explore Real Life beyond what we’ve most recently published and make our archive more organized, searchable, and useful. So we’ve created Topics pages to gather in one place the work we’ve published on some key themes. There are nine to begin with — including Algorithms, Conspiracy, Photography, and Self-Help — and many more to come soon, rolled out on a regular basis. You’ll always be able to find the most recent ones on our homepage, and the full set of topics will have their own page. If you are researching something or looking to find something to research, we hope this feature will help!
Click around the homepage or the Topics page, see what we’ve been up to, how we’ve organized it, and maybe find that essay you missed because you had too many tabs open at the time. Thanks to Cynthia Alfonso for the original illustrations.
And please let us know which Topics you’d like to see next!