digital media ecology
The immersive, turbulent, mediatized flow.
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters.
digital media ecology
But if the deep roots of boredom are in a lack of meaning, rather than a shortage of stimuli, and if there is a subtle, multilayered process by which information can give rise to meaning, then the constant flow of information to which we are becoming habituated cannot deliver on such a promise. At best, it allows us to distract ourselves with the... See more
This current manifestation of the internet and consumer technology is insidiously powerful because of the way that it can mimic these loops that evolved for other things and were necessary for our survival. They’re now essentially being co-opted by a sort of fake system. The tech systems have gotten so good at mimicking these ancient reward
... See moreMichael Easter • Scarcity Brain
Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers. Humans evolved in small groups, defined by kinship: those we knew, knew us. And our imaginative capabilities allowed us to know strangers—kings and queens, heroes of legend, gods above—all manner of at least partly mythic personalities to whom we may have felt as... See more
Chris Hayes • On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
So central is communication to the process of control that the two have become the joint subject of the modern science of cybernetics, defined by one of its founders as "the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal
James R. Beniger • The Control Revolution by James R. Beniger
This phenomenon in the insect world is known as stigmergy : a mechanism of indirect coordination, where each action leaves a “trace” that makes it easier for a succeeding action to occur.
Adam Aleksic • banality of the algorithm
The worlds we now inhabit are digitized realms incapable by their nature and design of generating a broadly shared experience of reality.