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How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
In other words: A group of people direct their attention to something, and that changes its value. This, in turn, draws the eye of various media and attention merchants, which in turn changes the value again. Crypto hype is the purest and most logical endpoint of this phenomenon. What most people are talking about with a given crypto asset is just ... See more
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
This depressing observation struck me as one outcome of living on an internet that is stuck in the past. It might seem the other way around: that our fleeting attention is the result of an internet that’s unrelentingly feeding us the now. But my hunch is that people feel stuck or move on because online, these events feel like things that have happe... See more
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
When it comes to the internet and our media ecosystems, it is easy to hurl vague, blanket critiques like Social media is making everything feel worse. That is mostly true, by the way—but it’s obvious. Which is why I was drawn to a recent idea from writer and technology theorist L.M. Sacasas: The internet, as a mediator of human interactions, is not... See more
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
The stuckness doesn’t just apply to arguments about guns. It applies to our sclerotic politics more broadly: the overlapping crises from climate inaction, the constant bungling of our pandemic response, and the seemingly successful attempt to roll back abortion rights. The stuckness isn’t part of a debate about how to move forward. It is, instead, ... See more
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
Constantly absorbing and commenting on things that have just happened sounds to me like a recipe for feeling powerless. Online, I frequently feel both stuck in the past but presented with a grim projection of the future. There is very little focus on the present, which is a place where we derive agency. We can act now.
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
We are stuck in a doom-loop. You cannot open your phone or turn on the television without experiencing and absorbing untenable levels of grief.
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
some are enclosed in this online world and develop a disordered relationship to time.
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
Do you ever get the feeling that we’re all just…stuck?
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
And so we fight against that futility, in part, by weighing in. And posting certainly feels like having agency.
The Atlantic • How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star
Sacasas has given me a valuable guiding question: How do we train our attention on our present and future, when so much of our life is spent ensconced in dispatches from the recent past?