The book 1.0
Working notes for Summer of Protocols
Internet people like to talk about “the stack,” or the layered architecture of protocols, software and hardware, operated by different service providers that collectively delivers the daily miracle of connection. It’s a complicated, dynamic system with a basic value baked into the core design: Key functions are kept separate to ensure resilience,... See more
Maria Farrell • We Need to Rewild the Internet
If you’re lucky, perhaps something you post will temporarily spark a surge of engagement, but those same spectators, exhausted by the onslaught, will soon shift their weary attentions to the next recommended item flowing close behind. This relentless pace rewards passive consumption, not active interaction with individual creators. The... See more
Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
In my new book, I came up with the word “Filterworld” to describe our interwoven environment of algorithms. These equations have become inescapable, influencing the vast majority of what we consume online — and thus what kinds of culture we consume, period. I use “filter” because algorithmic recommendations are ultimately filters that sort content.... See more
Welcome to Filterworld|Dirt
And a random Lana Del Rey review I stumbled across on Pitchfork a while ago said the job of the writer is “to whittle the raw material of life into meaning, worth preserving
What my writing is really about
Working notes for Summer of Protocols
Our sense of it being effective to stick together, to do things like loan each other sugar, proactively participate in building neighborhood safety and infrastructure, or babysit each other’s children is dissolving, because in fact it is no longer effective or efficient to do many of these things.
Everyone’s Existential Crisis
Susan Leigh Star, a sociologist and theorist of infrastructure and networks, wrote in her 1999 influential paper, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”:
“Study a city and neglect its sewers and power supplies (as many have), and you miss essential aspects of distributional justice and planning power. Study an information system and neglect its... See more
“Study a city and neglect its sewers and power supplies (as many have), and you miss essential aspects of distributional justice and planning power. Study an information system and neglect its... See more
Maria Farrell • We Need to Rewild the Internet
That for me is the poetics of encryption. Artists are already using generative AI as a tool to reimagine our relation to the perennial big ideas. Like: What is identity? What is spirituality? What is cultural heritage? How can the human resist the fast-moving disruption to our lives and to our long-standing imaginaries? These are the questions that... See more