Brian Thomas Clark

The smartphone turns us into fragmented actors in a perpetual now.

Collecting is an exercise in creating a framework, the logic of what is in or out. But then there are decisions that seem associative or intuitive.

Another reason for all the division: the self itself is fragmented. As Yancey Strickler says, we are in the era of the post-individual. Strickler’s essay is deep and illuminating, but it is best summarized by a Sean Monahan quote he includes in the article: “Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality.... See more

But there’s a whole universe that exists outside of your phone. All you need to do is turn away from the screen—even for just a short while—to understand that the culture of now is embedded in something much, much larger.

When we do that, we start seeing that our legacy from the past is an inherited treasure—and both offers us riches and imposes... See more

to write about the internet in a post-COVID world, specifically, means that you will have to write about everything because everything is now finally online. It’s not uncommon that I start questioning what the internet even is anymore. Is it the memes we share? Is it the platforms we share them on? Is it the infrastructure that underpins those... See more

Our oldest and closest friends – those we might call meaningful – have seen us at close quarters. They know our flaws, our faults, our failures; all the things that might make us less than admirable. They don’t like us in spite of these, but because of them. In the end, friendship is an acknowledgement of our imperfect humanity; built not through... See more

In “This Is for Everyone,” Berners-Lee argues that the web’s lack of compassion is “a design issue ” that can be fixed. “There’s still time,” he writes, “to build machines that serve the human,” that “promote the dignity of our fragile species on this isolated globe.” It’s a moving vision. But it’s hard to reconcile with the entropy of today’s... See more