A belated one year anniversary
Reintroducing digital field notes
Dear readers,
digital field notes turned one not too long ago. I have people subscribing at different points of the publication, and it’s a publication that’s actively evolving. Expectations as to what you will get as a reader will likely differ from one subscriber to the next. For that reason, I find it necessary to make space to reintroduce the publication, narrate what has happened over the course of a year plus, and convince you to open the email and read every time an edition of digital field notes lands in your inbox. Or, if you’re new here, to subscribe.
Let’s get to it.
I published my first piece of writing on Substack on February 25, 2025. It was the Preface of my Master’s dissertation, written a few months prior—I wrote about the culture of Indonesian venture capitalists. I tweaked a few things here and there, gave it a new title, and then I hit publish.
It wasn’t exactly a launch piece. I didn’t know what I was launching at the time. Nor did I have an inkling of how much time and effort I would like to dedicate to this “project”1. All the learnings and decisions as to where I would like to take this publication have arrived gradually. I am still actively doing that work, and will probably continue with the tinkering for as long as I’m working on this project.
In a way, the story of digital field notes fits the name perfectly2. I have to say I’m delighted by that.
Over the past year or so, digital field notes has taken up many purposes. It was a platform to share insights from my dissertation. It was a newsletter about technology as culture—I took it with me as I went about exploring London’s tech scene. It was a personal blog, a place to document my transition period as I returned to my hometown. And, in its most recent iteration, it’s a publication that runs a series I’m calling “An Algorithmic Becoming”.
This makes introducing digital field notes quite tricky. I probably haven’t done a good job convincing you why you should subscribe, or stay subscribed. Or what the publication is about, for that matter. But I find it important to let you, dear readers, be in the know that you’re reading a publication that is still trying to find its footing. That means, among other things, that I could be working on different series at different times, write in different formats, and have periods where I publish more routinely than others. I hope, if by the end of reading this you choose to stay as a reader, you do so because you want to follow along on this journey of figuring out whatever it is that I’m trying to figure out (very vague, very promising).
With that said…
Who writes this
I’m Yunindita Prasidya. I go by Dita. I’m a journalist and digital anthropologist by training. I write stories that sit at the intersection between business, technology, and culture.
I started my career in journalism at the business desk of The Jakarta Post, an Indonesian national newspaper, mostly covering banking and the stock market. I began covering technology as an industry during my time at The Ken, a Bangalore-based business and tech media startup. Being an Indonesia-based journalist, I mainly wrote about Indonesia’s startup and venture capital scene, with a few stints working on regional Southeast Asian stories. After a few years working in journalism, I decided to pursue my Master’s. The goal was to help me build frameworks to work on more humane stories about business and tech, having mostly written about them from a financialised perspective. I figured a cultural lens into things would help, so I applied to the Digital Anthropology programme at University College London. Fast forward, I got accepted, moved to London, graduated, and then started working on digital field notes—this publication is my take on the kind of stories I want to see more of in the world.
What this is
digital field notes is part journalism, part ethnography, part essay about our lives in a technology-saturated world—the ways we go about navigating, building, as well as challenging it. My goal is to document stories that humanise this world. The underlying conviction of the publication is that technology is a story about people, not products.
The connecting thread through it all is my subjective sensibilities. My stories often start from a place of trying to make sense of the taken-for-granted questions, ideas, and observations—a practice I’m drawing from the field of anthropology.
Throughout my journey, I have found myself having to navigate spaces that weren’t meant for me. What wasn’t written as part of my job description as a journalist but ended up becoming a big part of my work was to act as a knowledge translator. I got good at being uncomfortable and let my figuring things out—and how well I’m doing so—be reflected in my writings.
I wrote about the time I started my work as a business reporter, where I got lost in the big jargon of “non-performing loans” and “net interest margins”. This experience later emboldened me to study finance as an anthropological inquiry, which I wrote about in my first few editions.
I wrote about immersing myself in London’s tech scene, trying to document hidden social structures that govern the space, from inquiring about the existence of the “demo gods” in a community of technical engineers, to understanding the interplay between defeatism and optimism in London’s tech scene.
I wrote about the experience of job-hunting in an AI-run job market, as well as the challenges of writing in an LLM world.
More recently, I started inquiring into the ways algorithms and algorithmic technologies have become deeply entangled in our day-to-day lives. I started with asking the simple question of “Why do we doomscroll?”, and found myself pushing back against the idea that doomscrolling is a dopamine booster. It seems to be a painkiller, instead.
This series—An Algorithmic Becoming—is what I’ll be working on for the upcoming year (or maybe even longer). Our lives are becoming increasingly algorithmic. Doomscrolling is only one aspect of that. There is a lot more ground to cover. I’m interested in understanding algorithms in relation to wellbeing, belonging, as well as labour and value production.
Who this is for
For people who feel the friction of living in a tech-saturated world and want to deepen their understanding of what that friction actually is, rather than jumping straight to finding hacks as a response. This space to build deeper understanding is actively being eroded during times of technological transformation, as people are occupied with keeping up with the latest tech updates. I’m creating the space to help you grasp that change here.
For people who are employed in the tech sector who want to build a nuanced worldview about how their labour contributes to shaping the world. You might have already suspected that the most important questions about technology are not necessarily the technical ones. There are questions you’d like to explore but don’t have the time or bandwidth for. I’ll be the one to ask those questions on your behalf. (Send them to me!)
For people who are actively trying to build something meaningful with technology and want to understand the broader impacts of their endeavours. You’ve probably realised by now that the conversations in your builder circle often repeat the same tropes. It’s getting somewhat redundant. At this point, you’ve built systems and connections to discuss the more technical aspects of your enterprise. You’re looking for something different. Something to help you remain grounded. This is that.
For people who want to invest in a world where tech is a force of good. You might be getting tired of how the game is played. Maybe you’re even starting to lose faith in the players. You want to be exposed to realities that make your work more tangible, however conflicting that reality might be to the workings of your industry. Perhaps it’ll help you get a better sense of who’s in tune with the complexities of building good tech. I’d be more than pleased if this publication is of assistance to that goal.
Above all, it’s for people who believe that understanding the world more deeply is worth the time it takes, and that technology is one of the most important places to start.
Write to me
I would love to hear your feedback on any editions you’ve read. It helps me understand what resonates and why.
Was there a moment in any of the pieces you’ve read where you felt recognised? Did anything here put words to something you’d felt but hadn’t been able to name?
Has there been any piece (or its parts) that stayed with you after reading? What was it?
Is there someone in your life who needs to read this? What would you want them to get from this?
If you’re feeling ever so generous, drop a comment or send me an email (at digitalfieldnotesblog@gmail.com). If you have any feedback that doesn’t fit with any of these questions, I’ll be happy to receive it still.
As always, thanks for reading. If you’d like to receive an email every time a new edition comes out, be a subscriber (if you’re not already). If you’d like to support the work, consider becoming a paying subscriber.
Whatever brings you here, I’m glad you came. There’s a lot to figure out, and it’s better done in company.
Sincerely,
Dita
I still introduce digital field notes as a “project”, despite some negative connotations the word carries. I’ve learned that saying something is a “project” implies it is a less serious endeavour. If you read any of the pieces I’ve published here, I hope you can assess for yourself that it is anything but unserious. I am unbothered by the connotation because, personally, I have always associated the word with the idea of an open canvas where you get to do things that have yet to be done before. Above all, I just like getting to say, “I’m working on a project!” There’s something very upbeat about it.
I have people mistaking “digital field notes” as an actual term. It’s not. “Field notes” is. The term refers to records collected by researchers during their field study. digital field notes, on the other hand, is a name I put together. It’s mainly inspired by my time studying Digital Anthropology. The ideas being: 1) they are field notes I collected while studying “the digital” (broadly interpreted as digital technologies, digital lives, tech startups and companies, etc); 2) they are field notes stored digitally. But I’m also fond of the name because it has my name in it: digital field notes. (I’m pushing it, I know.)