The Unpublishable
On self-censorship in a connected world.
On my computer is a file named “unpublishable.txt”. Its content is right there on the label: Fragments of unworthy ideas have accumulated there for years, along with bits of things I’ve held back for other reasons — fear not least among them.
The Unpublishable file is filled with half-formed critiques of the systems I work within, questions about the ethical implications of design decisions I’ve helped implement, and doubts about the very nature of the work so many of us do in the digital age. I regularly open this document and add a few lines and close it quickly, assuming that’s as far as they will go — safely out of my head and into no one else’s. Keeping this file feels risky. Even though it’s on a physical drive, not in the cloud. Even though it’s encrypted. I still worry that The Unpublishable will, somehow, be published. What a nightmare that would be.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Despite decades working in design, participating in the cumulative craft of a porous and fluid shared database of information we call The Internet, here I am, maintaining my own private repository of thoughts deemed too dangerous — to me — to be shared. The reason is simple: in our hyperconnected world, every public statement exists in multiple contexts simultaneously. What might resonate deeply with one audience could alienate another, and in the professional world, those audiences often control our economic futures.
Consider this thought experiment: What would you write if ________ would never see it? Fill in the blank as you see fit with the most dangerous names: Your boss, your colleagues, your business partners, your friends, your family.
For me, this question immediately surfaces a cascade of critiques about how design often serves as a tool for capitalism’s endless appetite for growth and engagement. I think about how we’ve wrapped consumer manipulation in the language of user experience, how we’ve turned human attention into a commodity while calling it innovation, how we’ve embraced AI in one context knowing full well that it is completely eviscerating another — and that there are people in there.
Or I might explore how our industry’s obsession with “best practices” often results in homogenized experiences that prioritize safe mediocrity over meaningful innovation. I might question whether our pursuit of frictionless experiences is actually making the world better, or just easier to consume.
Maybe I’ll just go off on the fact that most design is not only bad but unnecessary. Most of us aren’t needed to do this work. Most of us are wasting our time and other peoples’, too.
All of these opinions are true and false, harmful and necessary. In other words, Unpublishable.
The challenge isn’t just about professional consequences. When all of our networks — professional, personal, familial — are interconnected, authentic expression becomes increasingly complex. The thoughts I might share with close friends over dinner become potentially career-limiting moves when published online. The critiques I might workshop with colleagues behind closed doors become political statements when made public.
Self-censorship is part of life, internet or not. I get that. But in the digital context, this is a bit more than just following the wisdom that not everything one things need be heard. It’s about the challenge digital communication brings to contextual integrity. In the past, thoughts could be shared within specific contexts: professional insights at conferences, political views at rallies, personal doubts with close friends. Now, everything we write online exists in all contexts simultaneously, viewable by all audiences, forever.
Perhaps this is why I find myself increasingly drawn to older, more contained forms of technology. There’s something appealing about a device that doesn’t connect to the internet, that holds thoughts without immediately broadcasting them. My paper journals are perfect containers of the unpublishable — readily available, disposable if need be, and private.
The question “What would you write if ________ would never see it?” reveals more than just our hidden thoughts — it exposes the invisible constraints we’ve accepted as part of participating in our interconnected professional world. It highlights how our economic dependencies shape our public discourse, and how the promise of unlimited connection has, paradoxically, limited certain kinds of expression.
I wonder how many important ideas remain unwritten because their authors calculate the professional risk as too high. How many crucial critiques of our industry practices, our economic systems, our technological trajectory remain trapped in private documents or unspoken conversations? What insights are we missing because the people best positioned to offer them are also the ones with the most to lose by doing so?
“I have space for the complexity, contradictions, and chaos of others, but I doubt that anyone has space for mine” is exactly the sort of thought that keeps necessary things unsaid — unpublished — and exactly the sort of feeling we have all had at the threshold of critical decisions and momentous events. History, no doubt, is as shaped by inaction and silence as their opposites.
There’s a certain safety in writing about this dilemma rather than the actual thoughts it suppresses. Meta-criticism becomes a proxy for the real criticism we dare not voice. But perhaps naming this dynamic is a start — a way to acknowledge the invisible boundaries that shape our public discourse, and to begin questioning whether the professional risks we perceive are worth the collective loss of authentic dialogue about the systems we help create and maintain.
Written by Christopher Butler on
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