Saved by Ian Vanagas and
The lost thread
I am going to make the argument that the predominant form of the social web — that amalgam of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Instagram — is an impoverished model for learning and research and that our survival as a species depends on us getting past the sweet, salty fat of “the web as conversation” and on to something more timeless,... See more
mikecaulfield • The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
Still, I think something more fundamental has been lost for all of us as social media has evolved. It’s harder to find the spark of discovery, or the sense that the Web offers an alternate world of possibilities. Instead of each forging our own idiosyncratic paths online, we are caught in the grooves that a few giant companies have carved for us... See more
Kyle Chayka • Coming of Age at the Dawn of the Social Internet | The New Yorker
Few, if any, of this moment’s apparently unstoppable tech platforms will survive for long. The people on them will eventually leave—when they’re forced to do so by the continuous degradation of their experience, or because they’re forced to do so because their governments put the hammer down, as Brazil recently demonstrated—or sometimes when they... See more
Erin Kissane • Against the Dark Forest
What do we need, and what do we only reach for out of habit? What exhausts, and what nourishes?
Social environments on the internet provide a bountiful — and sometimes incongruous — bundle: conversation, riffing, jokes and shitposts, entertainment, learning, distraction, inspiration, meeting interesting people.
It's a beautiful bundle, to be sure!... See more
Social environments on the internet provide a bountiful — and sometimes incongruous — bundle: conversation, riffing, jokes and shitposts, entertainment, learning, distraction, inspiration, meeting interesting people.
It's a beautiful bundle, to be sure!... See more
Towards Small-Scale Social
Large parasocial platforms transformed the internet into a hostile and impersonal place. They feed our FOMO to keep us clicking. They exaggerate our differences for "engagement". They create engines for stardom to keep us creeping. They bait us into nutritionless and sensationalist content. Humanity cannot subsist on hype alone.
Small and sincere... See more
Small and sincere... See more