This is an open-access research edition of a book exploring why modern life can feel unreal — through concepts like cognitive drift, semantic compression, information overload, and algorithmic mediation.

It looks at how meaning decays when information accelerates faster than our ability to make sense of it, and how digital systems shape perception, intuition, and "felt reality."

I’m sharing it here because many of the questions overlap with HN interests: cognitive architecture, sensemaking under complexity, information ecology, and the psychological impacts of algorithmic feeds.

Happy to answer questions or get critique.