There is no "us"

Like so many technologies that came before, it seems to be here to stay; the question is not how to escape it but how to understand ourselves in its inescapable wake.

In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more

My big takeaway is that, for the most part, people are actually still excited about the internet. They may not be racing to download Threads or generate images on Midjourney, but we are all much more online than we used to be. And contrary to what you might see from tech critics on X or even in this newsletter, I have not encountered the supposed t... See more

It makes me feel ancient to say this, but I see a lot of much younger people engage with some of my writing about technology, and they’re like, “Stop overthinking it, man. We’re all just online. That’s life!” And they are right, and I am overthinking it. But our experiences are different!

That's the thing with the internet. It is not a singular place: the internet is made up by many internets. Some are connected, and some are not. This makes it hard to talk about the internet because your internet is unlikely to be similar to mine. Even when we visit the same social site, we experience different worlds. Where D sees a subcategory of... See more

The internet reminds us on a daily basis that it is not at all rewarding to become aware of problems that you have no reasonable hope of solving. And, more important, the internet already is what it is. It has already become the central organ of contemporary life. It has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive

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As the internet evolves, especially for us “very online people,” there’s a deepening sense that we are, together, becoming something beyond the scope of our original intentions. We are rapidly approaching a sum far greater and more mysterious than what we often perceive as its cold, mechanistic parts.

While we conventionally think of ourselves as “u... See more