dreaming of a better internet

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

There are lots of layoffs, lots of budget cuts, lots of scary articles about how little books are selling, or whatever. I’d argue, however, that we’re in a moment of recalibration. A lot of the digital world isn’t working, not just as it pertains to media. The Internet writ large isn’t as fun as it used to be. Yet there is, I think, an awareness of... See more

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... See more

The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was... See more

The bigger question is, How do we fix the Internet for the ordinary person?

The big wigs don’t seem to want to answer that question thoroughly, perhaps because there’s no big money in this, so people have been trying to find solutions on their own.