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Dating websites were flooded with milquetoast strivers who earnestly listed business-management guides among their favorite books and arrived at dinner wearing backpacks stamped with the names of their employers. Young CEOs were showing up to sex parties expecting to play only with other young CEOs. My friends, covered in glitter and wearing tiny

Anna Wiener • Uncanny Valley: Seduction and Disillusionment in San Francisco’s Startup Scene

It’s strange to think of a “feed” existing outside of a screen, but these apps work like an algorithmic Netflix home page for physical space.

Kyle Chayka • Filterworld

Burn Book

Kara Swisher

amazon.com

In its variety, the Substack corpus resembles the blogosphere. It is produced by a mix of career journalists, bloggers, specialists, novelists, hobbyists, dabblers, and white-collar professionals looking to plump up their personal brands. The company has tried to recruit high-profile writers, offering (to a select few) health-care stipends, design... See more

Anna Wiene • Is Substack the Media Future We Want?

But in the age of ✨ networked computing ✨, this individual model of privacy just doesn’t scale anymore. There are too many exponentially intersecting relationships for any of us to keep in our head. It’s no longer just about what we tell a friend or the tax collector or even a journalist. It’s the digital footprint that we often unknowingly leave... See more

Jenny (Phire) Zhang • left alone, together

But from the beginning, the Internet’s design distributed power and resources to those at the “ends” of the network, that is, those on the network, as opposed to the owner of the network itself. It was, in its way, a modest design that relied on the passive virtues of connection and empowering others.

Tim Wu • The Age of Extraction

At its height in 2018, Joymode catered to as many as 10,000 monthly customers. Subscribers paid between $22 and $29 a month, while à la carte customers paid a fee equal to 10 percent of an item's retail price. Each week, Joymode processed more than 30,000 rental products through its warehouse, and during the summers--its busiest season--took in as... See more

Diana Ransom • inc.com

Hierarchies were being flattened, so a small company or a freelancer could compete with…

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Kyle Chayka • Filterworld

An Obituary for Reading the Internet

open.substack.com