what the internet is doing to us

Lately, our self-appointed disrupters have opened up a new frontier of capitalism,” Crawford wrote, “complete with its own frontier ethic: to boldly dig up and monetize every bit of private head space by appropriating our collective attention. In the process, we’ve sacrificed silence — the condition of not being addressed.” “And just as clean air m... See more

Many of us now experience a layer of ambient digital pollution that leaks into all aspects of our life, but the stuff that’s leaking isn’t fully chosen by us. There are overlords who curate the portals - the big tech companies - and they like to keep you addicted by pushing triggering stuff at you, or showing you stuff you’ve previously responded t... See more

In contrast, our current digital interface—defined as it is by the extraction, circulation, and consumption of virtual experiences—is at once information-rich and experience-poor. The compulsion to participate in it comes about not through external coercion but through the open-ended gratification of small choices that come to feel authentically ou... See more

So long as the appeal of digital services consists of the quantified reification of identity and the provision of anxious satisfactions, it will continue to obscure questions about the quality of our material lives. We should work to cut these services down or out entirely.

We are depleted by the pace and structure of contemporary life, particularly by how spatial and temporal boundaries that provided modest respites from the demands others could place on us have been eroded by the capacities of digital technology. Now we are always on and always available, our freneticism masquerading as flexibility. We are also depl... See more

“In place of occasional experiences of depth that renew and satisfy us,” I observed, “we are simply given an infinite surface upon which to skim indefinitely.”