new internet

About this Class #

There are two meanings of internet:

• the infrastructure that connects computing devices,


• or the ecosystem of applications built on that infrastructure.

When the average person says “internet” they usually refer to the second definition. This class, on the other hand, explores the first.

I recognize these attempts, yet I know for a fact that the internet — this home and caretaker and teacher and friend will never return to its prior state. Everything only experiences infancy once. But in the same way you return to your hometown after years of absence and see it evolve and reconstitute itself, the vestiges of beauty on the web have... See more

We’re in the midst of a significant evolution in what it means to be an individual. This experience and confluence of forces is what I call post-individualism — a term intended to capture the ways computers and the web have changed our sense of self and how society is changing in response.