Cory Ottenwess Chicago, IL — Est. nowish

Cory
Ottenwess

A working catalog

A former graphic designer in the middle of becoming something else. This is where the in-between work lives.

§ 01

A short introduction

I live in Chicago. I spent a long career in graphic design, and these days I'm headed somewhere different: toward teaching high school biology in the public school system. The road runs through community college, a lot of reading, and a quiet but stubborn interest in how science gets taught.

What you'll find here is the in-between. The creative work I make while I'm becoming whatever's next. Some of it is curriculum, some of it is theory, some of it is just thinking out loud. None of it is finished, which is more or less the point.

This site is a hub, not a portfolio. Come back occasionally and things will have moved.

§ 02

The thing I'm building toward

A book · An open protocol

Notes from an Acceleration Native

The longest-running of these experiments, and the one that pulls the rest together. A book arguing that the fight between AI and the creative economy is framed wrong — that the right frame isn't adversarial but architectural, and that what gets built before the enclosure completes decides the outcome.

It comes with running code: an open, AGPL-licensed protocol for communication and data ownership where the intermediary can't extract from you, because the architecture never gives it the means. The same question I ask of any platform, answered in a specification instead of an essay.

The book Trade nonfiction, landing 2026
The protocol Open source, live now
The frame Not adversarial. Architectural.
§ 03

Things I'm experimenting on

Teaching · curriculum

The Disinformation Lab

A classroom exercise asking students to distinguish real science from plausibly altered science. Built for a future biology classroom that doesn't exist yet.

In development
Theory · long form

A Republic, Argued

A constitution for a theoretical republic, drafted in 21 articles. An accompanying essay series adapts each article for a wider audience.

21 articles
Writing · serial

The Substack

Notes from the in-between. Essays, observations, and occasional dispatches from a career changing shape.

Read →
§ 04

Found elsewhere

§ 05

On being elsewhere

A few years ago, I left Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Not for any single grievance, but for the slow accumulation of small ones: the way attention had become a thing to be harvested, the way algorithms had quietly replaced choice with engagement, the way the platforms had stopped being places to be and started being places to be measured.

It was an informed decision, made on my own terms. Part defiance, part self-preservation. I don't claim it's the right call for everyone, only that it was the right one for me.

I'm still online. I post on Bluesky, lurk on Reddit, log books on The StoryGraph. The common thread is a question I now ask of any platform before I'll commit to it: who is being served here, and at whose expense? The answer isn't always clean, but asking the question changes what you're willing to accept.

§ 06

Recently on Bluesky

Loading recent posts…
Start a conversation, or a collaboration
hello@coryottenwess.com