Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #69
Somewhere between the late 2000’s aggregator sites and the contemporary For You Page, we lost our ability to curate the web. Worse still, we’ve outsourced our discovery to corporate algorithms. Most of us did it in exchange for an endless content feed.
Where have all the websites gone?
The network of algorithms makes so many decisions for us, and yet we have little way of talking back to it or changing how it works. This imbalance induces a state of passivity: We consume what the feeds recommend to us without engaging too deeply with the material.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
Navigating the modern internet feels like trudging through a hostile wasteland. The search and social algorithms, ostensibly designed to give us what we want, keep us trapped in the shallows, gorging on an endless supply of junk media that never quite satiates
rob hardy • The more beautiful internet our hearts know is possible
A 2023 Look-back: the internet dies, etc.
culture.ghost.io
The internet of today is a battleground. The idealism of the ’90s web is gone. The web 2.0 utopia — where we all lived in rounded filter bubbles of happiness — ended with the 2016 Presidential election when we learned that the tools we thought were only life-giving could be weaponized too. The public and semi-public spaces we created to develop our... See more
Yancey Strickler • The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
Mass culture itself has become a subculture — a sort of sideshow to the real action,
Toby Shorin • Life After Lifestyle
We shifted from cyberpunk manifestos, to corporate networks and the commoditization of the user for economic extraction.
Cyberspace is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality. And then represents it as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion. And we are getting lost in the spectacle.... See more
— an