digital life—digital cultures
Practically speaking, desktop experiences represent a past when the online world was driven from workstations, less devices , and intended to be curated, not consumed. So, as you might piece together your day again after 20 minutes needlessly refreshing a feed, let's remember what it felt like when we were surfing the internet, as opposed to it... See more
Dirt: Desktop was the place
Desktop was the place
Looking back through Bliss-colored glasses.
Patrick McKemey on the lost joys of the desktop internet.
dirt.fyi email
1/30/24
to write about the internet in a post-COVID world, specifically, means that you will have to write about everything because everything is now finally online. It’s not uncommon that I start questioning what the internet even is anymore. Is it the memes we share? Is it the platforms we share them on? Is it the infrastructure that underpins those... See more
Garbage forever
We are adrift–a culture of consumers accustomed to buying objects and building collections as the sole means of documenting our cultures–deprived of the infrastructure to do so. But our individual inability to collect and store is one I’ll lament the least.
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Yes, we’re drifting, but maybe we can choose to float towards a more collective stewardship... See more
Crimes Against Search | Dirt
personal agency vs enshittification
I feel alienated from people that believe technology can solve loneliness. To me, effective accelerationism is doomerism disguised as optimism. The belief that things won’t change and the belief that if they do change, through technology, it will be for the better are both sides of the same coin. In fact, just as entropy is an arrow of time, I... See more
Daisy Alioto • The Loneliness Economy
The Loneliness Economy
Griffin Moss is missing.
Daisy Alioto on the power of refusal in human and bot relations.
Oct 16, 2023
I get the impulse to recover a more democratic online world compared to the top-down dictates of Silicon Valley. But in seeking a more humane tech future, nostalgia is more hindrance than help; the alternatives will need to be legible to new generations weaned on social-media feeds.
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
As much as I share his concerns, this book repeatedly made we want to yell back at him for willfully underplaying obvious exceptions and counterarguments.
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
During the Romantic era, keepsakes were albums of fine engravings, often given as gifts, that sealed an emotion or celebrated a special occasion. This word, which combines to keep (to keep, preserve) and sake (a mark of friendship or consideration), takes on a particular resonance in our digital culture. At its core, it holds tensions related to... See more
Laurent François • The promises of digital keepsakes
Dec 03, 2024
We have been an essentially colonial civilization since the first enclosed farm, since agriculture, really, but definitely since territorial wars, slavery, and resource extraction. It’s what we do - not just with imperial armies, but with basic capitalism. This is our average. Our normal. A digital media environment with algorithms and AIs... See more
Douglas Rushkoff • Pockets of Weird: The Fight Over Reality
In any case, it’s enough to make anyone feel crazy. Over the last decade we’ve watched — and while I’m talking about the tech industry, I think we can all say it’s been everywhere else too — the things we love get distanced from us so that somebody else can get unbelievably rich, the things we used to do easily made more difficult, confusing and/or... See more