dreaming of a better internet

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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Scraping the Social: “We are unknown to ourselves—and with good reason.” Friedrich Nietzsche—“Even the retards are starting to figure it out.” (comment)—“In data we trust.” Priceonomics—“The Internet fails to scale gracefully.” Chris Ellis—“I want to be surprised by my own bot”—“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”... See more

We want to create a space which is much more creatively charged. We want Tumblr to be like going to a music show or a museum. You’re going to see some stuff that you haven’t seen before, you’re going to discover new stuff, and you’re also going to leave creatively charged. That’s not a mindset which is as conducive to advertising, but I do think

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I am going to make the argument that the predominant form of the social web — that amalgam of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Instagram — is an impoverished model for learning and research and that our survival as a species depends on us getting past the sweet, salty fat of “the web as conversation” and on to something more timeless,... 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