Spencer Chang builds physical objects that treat the internet as a living thing. His projects include internet sculptures at internetsculptures.com and computing shrines at shrine.computer, tangible artifacts designed to make networked computing feel present, communal, and worth preserving. His broader framework, the Alive Internet Theory at alivetheory.net, is the philosophical spine behind all of it.
This conversation with Jerod Santo goes deeper than the objects themselves. Chang's experiments with computing-infused objects pushed him toward a question most developers never ask: what does it feel like to be in the presence of a computer, not just in front of one? That distinction drives every project he builds, including playhtml, a library for making web elements shared and multiplayer by default.
If you think physical computing is a niche hobby, this episode will challenge that. Chang is building a coherent argument, in objects, websites, and code, that the internet's social decay is a design problem with design solutions. The full conversation is worth your time for the details on how these pieces connect.
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