These trends work together to keep us stuck in a permanent past because they make it harder to follow different trajectories, to see meaning, to grow as people. It’s a world that rewards predicting over inventing.

7. On the internet, the past is a black hole sucking the future into itself.

5. On the internet, action doesn’t build the future, it only feeds the digital archives of the past.

Structuration is a process of reciprocal interaction between human actors and the structural features of organisations, including organisations defined by technology. Human actions are both enabled and constrained by organisational structures; and those structures are the result of previous interactions.

If Luddism is simply the preference for agency over structures designed and coded by others, we’re going to need a bigger Ludd.

2. On the internet, all actions are inscriptions.

6. Because on the internet we live in the past, the future is not lived, it is programmed.

1. On the internet, we are always living in the past.

The mechanics of this permanent state of retrofuturism are simple: if you have access to detailed data about the behaviour of people, editorial control over what information people receive (as social or search recommendation engines), and the means to nudge people using designed affordances then... See more

this leads to static incentives in a dynamic world, and a sense of mindless repetition.