Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Real Life editor Nathan Jurgenson coined the term “digital dualism” to describe the false presumption of a clean line between the online and the offline. Like the nature/culture binary, the online/offline distinction stems from a misguided preoccupation with authenticity. It frames our relationship with technology in terms of either connection of
... See moreLauren Collee • The Great Offline
To accomplish this goal, the “proud extroversion” of the early Web soon gave way to a much more homogenized experience: hundred-and-forty-character text boxes, uniformly sized photos accompanied by short captions, Like buttons, retweet counts, and, ultimately, a shift away from chronological time lines and profile pages and toward statistically opt... See more
Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
We turn into each other’s audience, judging from afar. We become each other’s data harvesters, knowing who went where, at when and with whom. We even become each other’s digital oppressors: we form a limited perception of who we think someone is based on what they post, and when they do something that doesn’t conform to the imposed image of them, w... See more
Sherry Ning • Stop Looking At Each Other
And since technology is not value neutral, to be a technologist is to be inherently opinionated about how the world ought to be. Each act of creation is a statement about one particular means to an end being the best possible means. As Saffron Huang writes, “[b]ringing something into existence is in fact endorsing that thing itself. As we hurtle al... See more
Rebecca • On being a technologist
No. 13 — Reclaiming Discovery From the Algorithms
Michelle Rose Josephmichellerosejoseph.substack.com
- "the concrete practices of the tech industry now structure identity and individuality in ways that support its own hegemony. While it presents endless avenues for expression, it sees us as wholly reducible to market logic, where we are real to the degree that our consumption habits are rational. This vision of selfhood promotes uniformity and bou... See more
Emma Stamm • Who Can It Be Now — Real Life
‘Technology’, she wrote, ‘is the active human interface with the material world.’
James Bridle • Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence
Like so many technologies that came before, it seems to be here to stay; the question is not how to escape it but how to understand ourselves in its inescapable wake.
In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more
In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more