The book 1.0
The real breakthroughs that enabled the revival of the 1,000 True Fans model are better understood as cultural. The rise in both online news paywalls and subscription video-streaming services trained users to be more comfortable paying à la carte for content. When you already shell out regular subscription fees for newyorker.com, Netflix, Peacock,... See more
Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
I think everything you write has a purpose, and if you understand the purpose and the audience, you shouldn’t veer too far from what its intention is. I would like to be good at writing ad copy, writing press releases and writing articles in all their correct ways, but then also be able to experiment and expand the form.
Natasha Stagg’s New Book Perfectly Distils Life in Pandemic-Era New York
Flatness, like scalability, is efficient. The same culture flows through the same pipes to the same net-average consumer. But since when did efficiency become the sole metric by which we judge art? Filterworld represents the idea that the messiness of culture can be optimized and that only what is optimized for shareability is worthwhile. I... See more
Welcome to Filterworld|Dirt
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 that is what really gets me going: the dynamic between what’s going on in the world, and what it means for us as human beings.
What my writing is really about
So, if the Internet has effectively become cable TV, what is the new information frontier?
Gaby Goldberg • Making the Internet Alive Again
A few years ago, a user by the name of IlluminatiPirate published Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake on the online forum Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe.1 The theory proposes that the majority of the content with which we engage online is algorithmically generated by bots, all in an effort to control what we believe. I feel obligated to... See more
Gaby Goldberg • Making the Internet Alive Again
technology and globalization have changed our information streams and our patterns of life drastically enough that the ways we calibrate around incoming information are becoming increasingly dangerous for us,
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