The revival begins

The other day, I opened a music app and flipped through the auto-generated “year-in-review” section. It walked me through each month, showing what songs I listened to the most. At the end, it even ascribed a personality type to me based on my listening habits. It all felt presumptuous (as do all the similar year-end recaps from other apps, including my bank’s), using a single data set to conclude so much about me.

I think what stood out most to me was how cold it all was. The algorithm knew the songs I listened to, and it could even deduce some of my favorites. But it didn’t know why they were my favorites, or who I was playing them for. It didn’t know me at all. 

Because anyone who actually knows or cares about me would never want me to relive 2025.

You see, I shouldn’t be the one writing this post today. The Revival Lab is Brandi’s dream. As you’ll learn more about in our next post in a couple of weeks, Brandi Collins-Dexter built a reputation for courageously identifying and staring down the most powerful entities — the tech monopolies, the ruthless oligarchs, the corporate media — that control so much of the information we consume. That try to control our lives.

Brandi had planned this project for years and finally made the big leap at the end of last year to get it up and running. But cancer doesn’t care about your plans. She was diagnosed on New Year’s Day 2025 and gone by June, a week before our eighth wedding anniversary.

So here I am, on what would have been Brandi’s 45th birthday, introducing the world to The Revival Lab. She described it as a “think-and-do” tank dedicated to providing solutions, analysis, and research at the intersection of tech, media, and democracy. So that’s what it will be.

It launches today with this newsletter, The Revival Letter, which will feature original pieces from writers and scholars on tech, media, and information justice.

We have a lot of work ahead, but I hope we can earn your interest and your generosity (donate here).

As 2025 painfully taught me, nothing is guaranteed, but I can promise you this: Just as Brandi's work always was, The Revival Lab will be grounded in community and rooted in reality. Our analysis will illuminate what power looks like in the hands of those who want to isolate us, and what it can look like in our hands.

We will learn from past movements, knowing full well that the consolidation of corporate power and the assaults on basic rights and liberties that we see today are not unprecedented. And we will champion what the tech monopolies and corporate media want to erode — the things that make us human. Our relationships, our attention to detail, our imaginations. The things that an algorithm could never understand.

I hope we create a space you keep coming back to. One where we can learn, rejoice, laugh, grieve, and fight together. One where we win.

Welcome to the revival.

Happy birthday, Brandi.