high tech low life

`I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.' --- Umberto Eco, quoted in the New Yorker

As it turns out, not long ago there was a whole generation of technologists who aspired to fix the internet. Now, many of these individuals, a portion of which I'm lucky to call friends, don't seem to be very interested in the reformist game anymore. It feels like an entire vibrant movement has been smothered and memory-holed, and nothing has prove

The New Internet that's in question here probably began to coalesce in the early 2010s. At first, it emerged slowly, stewing in the public discontent that grew out of an increasingly powerful and extractive tech sector. Just as much as it was a professional stance, the reaction was a visceral one. Many users of the internet were beginning to notice

On another level, the story of the New Internet is a story of individuals and their psychologies. Over the last decade, technology workers have opened themselves up to a tremendous amount of value drift (the process in which previously steadfast values are compromised over time).

EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them? NILAY PATEL: No. We did not come this far to bring back answering machines. Setec astronomy.

The deeper you get into the process, the more you realize this idea of man and machine — of disappearing into the computer — becomes a form of automatic writing. Sleight of hand. You almost don’t feel conscious when you’re working. For me, that’s the tipping zone into the man-machine idea. When I got into electronic music, I recognized early on tha

I have this really intense relationship with my phone and with my laptop, and in a lot of ways the laptop is the most intimate instrument that we've ever seen. It can mediate my relationships — it mediates my bank account — in a way that a violin or another acoustic instrument just simply can't do. It's really a hyper-emotional instrument, and I sp