While not-for-profit projects do exist, it seems increasingly rare for participatory worlds to avoid commercialization, especially when attention is the primary currency of the internet.

One reason the Amazon bookstore felt so strange was that it represented a blatant intrusion of the Internet’s algorithmic logic into what we call “real life.”

Unfortunately, advertising has been ingrained into the internet as the basic model for so long and to such an extent that it’s hard to envision online life without the systematic manipulation of attention and all its evils. So we’re bound to wind up here, at the bitter end of “content.” Which is a good excuse to withdraw deeper into books, movies,