E=Mo2: Ethics, Media, and Oppor2unity
We’re living in the age of the convenience cage.
That’s the unsettling conclusion I kept returning to while developing this album. My PhD work on machine learning and public perception opened the door, but it was living with that research that shaped the heart of this project. What I learned wasn’t just how algorithms analyze human emotion, but how they are used to direct it.
We’re told that we are the creators. That our posts, our playlists, our preferences shape the platforms we live on. But in truth, what we’re “creating” is a data trail — one that teaches the system how best to influence, target, distract, and ultimately control us. It’s not just about selling products anymore. It’s about shaping perception. About defining reality.
As Shoshana Zuboff writes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, we are meant to feel empowered by these technologies — personalized ads, curated feeds, seamless UX. But the deeper truth is that these comforts are bait. Behind the curtain, our experiences are being mined, modeled, and manipulated in ways we can’t see. And the worst part? It works because it feels so familiar.
I included a quote from Zuboff in Distant Sphere, the last song of the album. Not as a thesis statement, but as a final reminder that even as the music ends, the systems we’re confronting remain intact. This album isn’t here to solve that. It’s here to expose it. To question the narratives we have accepted as progress. To honestly ask, what have we lost in exchange for this seamlessness?
Music, for me, is one of the last spaces where unmediated expression still feels possible. But even that is under threat. As platforms incentivize formulaic content, and AI tools replicate “style” without soul, the very idea of human artistry risks being eroded. So this project became a kind of line in the sand. Not against technology itself, but against its unchecked dominance over intimacy, choice, and meaning. If the machine can’t cry, then maybe our job is to do it louder. In public. In harmony. On stage. Before it forgets what we sound like.
Funny enough this concept translated into some of our concert merch, with the E=Mo2 t-shirt them, the de facto formula for our protest against algorithmic control, a sort of Emo 2.0 but instead of being mad at our parents for not taking us to a Green Day concert we are in a post-teenage angst battle with our technofeudal lords.
