dreaming of a better internet

That's the thing with the internet. It is not a singular place: the internet is made up by many internets. Some are connected, and some are not. This makes it hard to talk about the internet because your internet is unlikely to be similar to mine. Even when we visit the same social site, we experience different worlds. Where D sees a subcategory of... See more

The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.