Once You Get the Message, Hang Up the Phone
The internet has dramatically changed our ability to know things, but our ability to change things has remained the same, or possibly diminished as a) most of our free-time is now spread out in unsatisfying micro doses of scrolling throughout the day b) seeming has become more important than doing.
On the Internet, clapping for essential workers is
... See morethere’s this struggle in my head. Is the world ending, or is it a nice day and I’m getting coffee? Obviously, it’s not a binary thing, but living this way is sometimes brain-scrambling. It’s not like the constant doom and gloom of Twitter was making me a better climate activist. Instead I’d be paralyzed. Twitter incentivizes you to live in this con... See more
The Atlantic • How to Leave an Internet That’s Always in Crisis
In a 2017 interview, Ev Williams (the founder of Twitter), said something that has stuck with me since: “the trouble with algorithms, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it trie... See more
sari azout • My Favorite Questions
Sometimes it can feel like the online spaces you spend time in are working against you, pushing you toward things that their owners value instead of what you value—and harnessing your energy to fuel the very things you hate. Like me, you probably know the feeling of spending too much time gorging on digital junk food, wasting precious moments of yo... See more
Chris Best • An Algorithm for Quality
