dreaming of a better internet

ore often than not, the digital gardens of today are botanic—privately owned online spaces made for visitors to fawn over while a “do not touch” sign looms in view. These private gardens are generative for our personal learning, but they are far from the communal gardens I grew up in that valued collective work and knowledge. Where are the digital

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I don’t know how to explain it, exactly, but when I scroll down the timeline now it feels like everyone has gotten 100 times more smug? And literal and pedantic? They always think they are dunking on someone. But on who, and to what end? It’s so weird. Everybody is like, sticking their tongues out all the time. It’s very “be careful or your face

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As part of its purpose in slowing news down (hence the name), and taking time to make sense of what’s really going on in the world rather than just react to the immediate, Tortoise’s editorial team hosts weekly online ‘Open News Think-Ins’ at which they discuss the news stories of the week with the subscriber community. They start the conversation

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I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have... See more

The Internet Vs. The Care of Your Soul

1. No laptop in bed.

2. No internet for at least 30 minutes before you got to sleep.

3. Nothing on your feed reader that posts more than X times per Y.

4. Being bored does not mean you have to check your email.

5. Don't only read websites related to subjects you know inside and out.

6. For every X feeds that you add... See more

if aliens ever land,

we'll board their ship

and discover that they have

a better internet

than we do.

“The infoverse may be infinite, but our allotment of days is not.” We ought to be conscious of how far and how quickly we move through the internet. But without a physical way to observe our time spent online, we risk scrolling, skimming, and hyperlinking ourselves to oblivion.