Sublime

An inspiration engine for ideas

AllPeopleCollectionsArticlesAudioBooksFilesHighlightsImagesLinksNotesTextTweetsVideosSocial

In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, these attitudes radically shifted. For different reasons, both sides of the political spectrum began to immensely distrust the platform monopolies. The algorithmically curated streams that had once seemed so futuristic suddenly became Orwellian. Today, it’s not only acceptable to move more of your... See more

Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class

This combines with Mazzucato’s analysis in a way that could permit a left that re-embraced modernism to deliver a pretty good solution to the problem of the innovation desert. But the crucial thing here is not just—or not even—the cuts in public spending on research and development, or the reduced proportion of spending on pure research compared to

Leigh Phillips • Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts: A Defence Of Growth, Progress, Industry And Stuff

In Sarah Schulman’s book The Gentrification of the Mind , she laments, “Will everything (books, music, pornography, education, movies, friendship, camaraderie, love, and television) all be free if they’re consumed online and prohibitively expensive to experience in person?” She wrote this in 2012 and may not have anticipated how much further that... See more

Drew Austin • #184: Pure Pain Sugar

Om Malik blog post : "I wonder if this culture of participation was helping build businesses on our collective backs. If we tag, bookmark, or share and help del.icio.us or Technorati or Yahoo become better commerical entities, aren't we commoditizing our most valuable asset: time? We become the outsourced workforce, though it is still unclear what... See more

Anthony Williams • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Counter Currents: Are.na on Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines

Charles Broskoski walkerart.org

In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the... See more

Ben Tarnoff • Internet for the People

The reduction of reality to information and humans to genotypes all-too-conveniently dovetails with capitalism’s imperative to render everything into a suitable form for the marketplace. Everything is data, and everything has a price, and everything can scale.

Douglas Rushkoff • Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

The Faustian bargain of the digital age—free or cheap digital conveniences in exchange for our data—was only ever explained to us after it was already a done deal. And it represents an enormous and radical shift not only in how we live but also, far more importantly, in what our lives are for. We are all mine sites now, data mine sites, and despite