Saving the Invisible
Another way of putting it is like this: a sunset is sublime because a human cannot make one, its existence transcends human ability; meanwhile, a picture of a sunset is merely beautiful because it reflects, through human invention, a thing that no amount of human ingenuity can actually replicate in real life. What’s more, a sunset is sublime becaus... See more
This instability only intensifies the cultural flattening going on, since users can’t store or revisit their past experiences within their original context.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
We are watching the internet slip away as websites and apps rise and fall, swallowed by private equity, shuttered by burnout, or simply frozen in time — taking with it our memories, our cultural phenomena, our memes. In theory, as we like to tell Zoomers who are putting it all out there, “the internet is forever.” Employers and enemies can and will... See more
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
What’s more, nothing on social media belongs to us. Our art, our ideas and our relationships are reduced to data to be mined and exploited by tech corporations, sometimes even used to train A.I. models. We have no backups, either: Few people still keep address books or mailing lists, much less diaries or photo albums. When we lose access to social ... See more
Opinion | I Gave Up My Smartphone for a Dumbphone. You Can, Too.
The shifting sands of digital technology have robbed our collections of their meaning. They appear only as nostalgic ruins, the remains of once-inhabited metropolises gone silent. Many of the images I once shared on Tumblr are now broken links. I could have downloaded these collections in their prime and made sure I could always access them, but th
... See moreKyle Chayka • Filterworld
The web has an almost infinite capacity for storage and memory yet its prevailing use is an acceleration of ephemerality. The reasons for this are complex to say the least (of which financial short term gain is probably the most prevalent). But this doesn’t mean the tendency can’t be resisted. Perhaps books as well as their online s
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