dreaming of a better internet

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

Instead of discussing whether the internet is good or bad, I suggest we start by asking: do you want to show me your internet?

Search engines — the window into the web for many people — top their results with pages containing thousands of words of auto-generated nothingness, perfectly optimized for search engine prominence and to pull in money via ads and affiliate links while simultaneously devoid of any useful information.

Social networks have become “the web” for many pe... See more

instead of seeking to maximize status — which some of us still do — more of us find ourselves seeking safety and context online instead.

people still carve out community in the most hostile of places and subvert platforms to create space for human-first desires. We create solidarity infrastructure out of text chains, subvert government control through form submissions, and carve intimate sanctuaries in the comment sections and profiles of algorithmically controlled wastelands. We ma... See more

To reach an internet that cultivates mutual love, we have to move through the hate, pain, and existing preconceptions of what it is for and can be. We have to be able to first imagine, and then, create different possibilities for how technology can bring people together and help us create a better world.

for nearly fourteen years afterwards, I stared at a smartphone every single day. Five thousand days, all in all. I can’t think of anything else I’ve done with the same level of commitment. There have been days where I’ve had nothing to eat or drink and there have been nights when I didn’t sleep. But until very recently, I never once went twenty-fou... See more