failings of the modern internet
A big part of why the world is in this unholy mess (pick one...) is because we have created a global business ecosystem that’s almost entirely dependent on hacking human neurochemistry and encouraging and amplifying whatever content will capture the most eyeballs for the longest amount of time, whether that’s music or news or social posts or video,... See more
2025 Tech Resolutions with Patrick from Hard Refresh
The omnipresent do-anything button of AI is certainly tempting. And companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are encouraging such behavior while hoping to prove out their investment in AI tools.
If you use AI to write me that note, don’t expect me to read it
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
Social networks have become “the web” for many... See more
Escape: the perks of being unavailable
this is what we need when the Internet has forced us to become 24/7 accessible
If you go too far off the beaten path of algorithmic consistency, you risk never being heard. You may never get enough cultural momentum to exist in any meaningful way. That is a real problem. But if you're too good at algorithmic optimization, you risk building a large audience without saying anything particularly original or important. Not to... See more
Justin Murphy • The Imperceptible Mechanisms of Deep Community
In his view, everything society now produced—including science and technology—served industry, not humanity, and thus was increasingly being purposed not to enrich our lives but to psychologically condition us so we wouldn’t resist what was being done to us and to the earth.
Why Everything is Becoming a Game
applicable to the internet
With each passing month, social media is less social and more about media.
TURKEY_SCRAPS_v170
We are now in the era of the AI-born LinkedIn expert. Their mastery is dropping a story into ChatGPT and asking for a perky LinkedIn post summarizing it. (LinkedIn even has its own AI writing assistant that encourages people to “Rewrite with AI” to serve up this slop.) They snatch the thoughts and research of others, reconstitute it, and present it... See more
If you use AI to write me that note, don’t expect me to read it
‘Algorithmic’ has become a byword for anything that feels too slick, too reductive, or too optimized for attracting attention: a combination of high production values with little concern for fundamental content.
— Filterworld, pg. 140