Broken Links

Though histories of capitalism tend to distinguish between three stages (market, monopoly, late), its story can be retold as one of an ongoing dematerialization of value that begins when an “ordinary, sensuous thing”—a table, say—is transformed into a commodity.[31] Value performs an acrobatic feat, leaping from the ligneous form of the table-in-us... See more

Homelessness is about more than lacking a base that offers protection from the elements and material security. It’s about lacking an integrated identity, a “home” persona that is contained and shaped by, and active within, the home as a psychological boundary.

Taken together, the union of all your ways of potentially or actually being at home in various areas of your life, online and offline, constitute how you are at home in the universe itself, and on the planet in particular. Along each dimension, you might exist anywhere from nascent, to viable, to disintegrated conditions of identity.

None of us is a... See more

‘The internet is forever’ has long been the refrain of neurotics who wring their hands over privacy. But, back in the earliest days of online interaction, we couldn’t conceptualise what forever meant for digital experiences. They seemed ephemeral, intimate. We were blissfully unaware that our little exchanges might one day be part of ‘Big Data’ to ... See more

Knowing your site will survive for decades to come gives you the mental wherewithal to tackle long-term tasks like gathering information for years, and such persistence can be useful⁠⁠19⁠—if one holds onto every glimmer of genius for years, then even the dullest person may look a bit like a genius himself⁠⁠20⁠.

This sort of collapsed, derelict condition can appear around any disintegrating dimension of being.

We can always opt out of this arrangement, of course, and live happily in meatspace, but that is precisely the point: Offline we exist by default; online we have to post our way into selfhood.

The securitized subprime mortgages that triggered the global financial crisis demonstrated that even the most material of possessions—the home—was as if made of air and could burst like a bubble. The same years saw the permeation of network technologies into everyday life through smartphone use. These were years in which the meanings of materiality... See more