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Some of you might have read my previous article, Against an Increasingly User Hostile Web. In it, I argue that we are replacing an open web that connects and empowers with one that restricts and commoditises people. I talk about how the modern web of surveillance, bloat and walled gardens is at odds with the open web that I love.

Parimal Satyal • Rediscovering the Small Web

Algorithms were once believed to untether us from the masses and offer paths for personalization. But “For You” is not about pushing the limits of our artistic palates, but a device to serve us what the platform wants us to be satisfied with.

Say you subscribe to a YouTube channel with very niche videos about the inner workings of ball bearings (or something equally niche). You, the viewer, have a high chance of not seeing any new videos from this channel - even though you subscribe to it - because the content just isn't suited to the YouTube algorithm. Equally, the creator of videos ab... See more

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Fascinating Future

“Civium is a way of looking at cities, and specifically what a post-city world might look like.

It imagines an alliance between technology and the countryside replacing the city as the focus of creativity and wealth-creation.

It is the idea that there is no longer much point living in the middle of a large conurbation when you can n

Instead of opting out of social media, how can we use it to connect and form relationships with figures or ideas we never before had access to?

Instead of mourning our sense of direction, how can we use our map apps to seek out tiny shops and cafes for a better sense of locality and sense of neighborhood in cities?

Instead of falling into endless con... See more

Matt Klein • Unplugging Is Not the Solution You Want

In her book, The Politics of Possibility, sociologist Louise Amoore argues for designing algorithms as tools that can present decision-makers and community stakeholders with multiple possibilities for identifying and addressing social problems, rather than seeing algorithms as the solver of problems. This means agency stays with people, not machine... See more

José Marichal • Trust an algorithm, or trust your neighbor?

The foundational trade-off of the internet was to cast scarcity, consensus, and identity aside in favor of freedom and openness.

Sacha Meyers • Bitcoin Is Venice: Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism

The biggest challenges we face aren’t technical.

They are psychological, philosophical–questions of values, ethics, worldviews.

Just as we are living inside Zuckerberg’s belief in instant connection.

And Steve Jobs’ dream of the computer as a bicycle for the mind…

We are already stepping into the world imagined by Sam Altman.

But what is his vision of a