new internet

ethos

the digital spaces we want

🚨This is the trap that social media, and by extension all of us, are in:

📈Toxicity drives use. Lowering toxicity drops ad sales (if you are ad supported) & engagement (even if you are not)

📉Toxicity spreads like a disease. It turns regular users toxic & makes networks awful

Noah Smith • The internet wants to be fragmented - by Noah Smith The internet wants to be fragmented

Back in the 2000s, a lot of blogs were about blogs , about blogging. If that sounds exhaustingly meta, well, yes — but it was also SUPER generative. When the thing can describe itself, when it becomes the natural place to discuss and debate itself, I am telling you: some flywheel gets spinning, and powerful things start to happen.

Robin Sloan • A Year of New Avenues

humanity is still adapting to the fact that ordinary people have broadcasting capability. cultural norms around this are still being negotiated in real time. it’s actually imo more disruptive than promethean fire; you can’t use fire to burn people on the other side of the planet

x.com

we’re going to look back at how we designed the world around computers with the same regret that we look at how we’ve designed cities around cars

Maxim Leyzerovich x.com

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.

Ben Cuan • Intro to the Internet | 🗒️ Ben's Notes

Social Computing | CS 278

web.stanford.edu

The End of the Extremely Online Era

substack.com