dreaming of a better internet

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

Many of us yearn for a way to be fully online without all of the mindlessness, passivity and addiction that often entraps us. Some of us oscillate between fully online and fully offline in a sort of mad dance to establish what feels right. Others have lost hope that it’s possible to engage in a way that feels true and alive, and have resigned to... See more

Playful software often conjures up video games, but I don't mean that. Where I see the lack of play is in consumer software: design tools, social networks, dating apps, messengers. Borrowing from Brian Upton's The Aesthetics of Play , I'm talking about play that isn't segregated from ordinary life, “[play that's] embedded within ordinary life;... See more

when a website, especially one that invites mass participation, goes offline or executes a huge dump of its data and resources, it’s as if a smallish Library of Alexandria has been burned to the ground. Except unlike the burning of such a library, when a website folds, the ensuing commentary from tech blogs asks only why the company folded, or why... See more