dreaming of a better internet
sari and
dreaming of a better internet
What’s your first memory of the internet?
Iconic dial-up tone aside, the internet has transformed into something very different from how many of us remember it.
The silver lining?
With radical, unwavering hope, we can all positively impact the future of... See more
instagram.comIn an industry riddled with intense antagonism and high expectations, “Low Sodium” harkens back to what makes gaming so special: pure play .
Substack • The Rise of Low Sodium & Gentle Gaming
But the bigger loss of human agency comes from the billions of people that use these apps. These deep learning AIs are designed to maximize the time we all spend on these apps. While you are reading this memo, you are probably jonesing to switch over to Instagram or TikTok. It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI... See more
Jonah Peretti • The Anti-SNARF Manifesto
The news stories and journalism that break through aren’t the most important stories, but rather the stories that can be shaped into SNARF.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are engines of distraction and cultural rot. They stand in front of the more difficult but more rewarding aspects of life: deep work, intimate connections with friends and loved ones, focused attention for hobbies with intrinsic rewards. By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of... See more
Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison
"Irony is the song of a bird that has come to love its cage." - David Foster Wallace
So perhaps that means changing the terms of the argument or goal. Perhaps, for the medium-term future at least, "winning" and replacing this enshittified monoculture (yes, I really need to read Cory's book), if it isn't possible, is more about cultivating a base layer, I don't know, some sort of mycelial network that's impossible to nuke out of
... See moreDan Hon • S16e08: Free-Range, Organic, and Natural; The Original Promise
If you’re posting on social media or any platform with an algorithm, the real question is: do you work for the algorithm or are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?
Seth Godin • Feeding the algorithm
the internet is the greatest device for opening up the world ever devised. It is democratising and enabling. But that assumes its users draw on it to aid System 2 thinking. Plainly, there are times when we use it to inform key decisions – to find out about an illness, to research a holiday, to track a scientific breakthrough. But in the main the... See more
Will Hutton • We need a social media with heart that gives us time to think
We’ve long had the sense that it’s possible to cultivate an experience on the Internet that is more calm, thoughtful, and introspective. And we’ve long had the view that this is possible not from a technology-oriented approach, but from an approach that is more soft, more personal, and more intuitive.