dreaming of a better internet

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... See more

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the majority of respondents would prefer to live in a world where TikTok and Instagram did not exist!

We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.

Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.

Ritual technology operates on... See more

I myself write online of course and I will continue to do so but save for this essay, this latest contribution to the thousands of terabytes of jeremiads that festoon the worldwide web, I don’t have much to say about our online world anymore. I’m tired of it. Half an hour or so a day is ample time to catch up with my online community of people and... See more