Gumroad

I’ve recently begun to visit the internet. There, I’ve found cement, metal gates, water tanks, miles of solar farms, buzzing wires, fiber optic trenches, and towers. Data centers, often hidden from the everyday ‘user,’ house rows of blinking servers containing the vast contents of our digital lives. Inside these electronics lie conductive materials... See more

The internet is, after all, a physical presence. Its tubes cross the ocean. Its servers fill up deserts in Arizona. Too often we’re not prepared to visualize it in that way. The photographer Trevor Paglen has done an essential project where he dives into the ocean and tracks the cables snaking along the sea floor. He shoots portraits of Miami Beach

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If we take the metaphor of the wood wide web seriously, it’s hard not to see an analogy here to the context collapse endemic to social media. A few corporations control the lion’s share of public cloud infrastructure, and monopolistic ISPs exploit everyday users. Tech and social media giants have clear-cut the web, privileging high-value crops—vira... See more