On Information

"Authorship"-in the sense we know it today, individual intellectual effort related to the book as an economic commodity-was practically unknown before the advent of print technology. Medieval scholars were indifferent to the precise identity of the "books" they studied. In turn, they rarely signed even what was clearly their own. They were a humble

The information in your news feeds is curated for interest or surprise. As such, the news is not a record of the ordinary but the extraordinary—a reflection not of reality but of precisely that which is uncharacteristic of reality.

-Gurwinder

having the core syllabus of your life is one of the best things you can have as an anchor. internet content dumpster fire has made it so much harder to keep and to covet! do not fall in the trap!

-h/t katie wav

Information networks should have more 'serendipity' filters that take you outside the things you normally see. Follow graphs and interest graphs are great - but they are far more vulnerably to groupthink, tunnel vision, and filter bubbles.

"The information you consume each day is the soil from which your future thoughts are grown."

From Bill Gates’ conversation with Trevor Noah on the What now? podcast, reflecting on social media and the Internet:

Our industry was very young and just incredibly fast moving, but it didn't have this, oh, this will be a tool for Holocaust denial or weird impacts. And the idea that it would directly be used for political influence, one country try

Content will be commoditized by AI—but content isn’t culture

From Hamish McKenzie

This same surge in AI-led content production will simultaneously fuel a tremendous need for cultural connection: real humans in communion with one another. These relationships help us make sense of the world, and to know where to direct our attention. Their value will d

The only way to find truth in a firehosed-world that is teeming with misinformation is to become acclimated to a world that is filled with lies. We will stop trusting what we see when we are exposed to lies so often, and this will force us to seek out the truth.

Researcher Simon DeDeo on the three eras of information history:

• The premodern/archaic era, when most information was generated by non-human phenomena like seasons, weather, drought, flood, hail, lightning. “The gods”.

• The modern/postmodern era, when most information was broadcast by a small number of information “sellers”, and consumed by a large

Reflecting on this email from a Sublime believer:

Consuming media has become a massive time-suck for humankind. Only decades ago, the average person had one source of information, if any — the newspaper. Journalists chronicled happenings relevant to their community. And that was it. Someone got married, someone is selling their house, someone died,