Ian Bogost

Ian Bogost is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Ordinary Extraordinary. He is the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is also a computer-science and engineering professor. Bogost is the author of 11 books, most recently The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life. He is also an award-winning game designer whose work has been played by millions of people and has been held in collections internationally, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Ordinary Extraordinary

Ian Bogost’s guide to making everyday life vivid.


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Latest

  1. The Gestures We’ve Forgotten

    Time and change have obscured certain gestures, such as cranking a machine or dialing a rotary phone, but we can still rediscover them.

    Illustration of an old yellow telephone
    Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic
  2. The Tragedy of AI Coding

    AI-assisted software development could have liberated programmers. Instead, it has become the latest way for Big Tech to confine us.

    An animated illustration showing flashing screens of code on different devices
    Illustration by Tina Zhou / The Atlantic
  3. College Is Coming Apart

    Successive, overlapping crises reveal that American higher education makes no sense.

    A photo illustration of a college desk on top of a vortex
    Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
  4. The Thrill of Wanting AI to Destroy the World

    An Anthropic researcher quit his job because he believes AI will destroy humanity. His story is going viral because so many others want to believe too.

    An illustration of a little boy standing in a desert next to an image of a bomb exploding in a desert.
    Illustration by Liz Sanders. Sources: PhotoQuest / Getty; Keystone / Getty; Keystone France / Getty.