“The infoverse may be infinite, but our allotment of days is not.” We ought to be conscious of how far and how quickly we move through the internet. But without a physical way to observe our time spent online, we risk scrolling, skimming, and hyperlinking ourselves to oblivion.
One woman described the world today as “scam or be scammed” — a phrase that got murmurs of agreement. As people talked about their jobs, school, AI, and clout-chasing, the scam or be scammed idea kept returning
We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
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.