Structuration is a process of reciprocal interaction between human actors and the structural features of organisations, including organisations defined by technology. Human actions are both enabled and constrained by organisational structures; and those structures are the result of previous interactions.

1. On the internet, we are always living in the past.

The mechanics of this permanent state of retrofuturism are simple: if you have access to detailed data about the behaviour of people, editorial control over what information people receive (as social or search recommendation engines), and the means to nudge people using designed affordances then ... See more

6. Because on the internet we live in the past, the future is not lived, it is programmed.

2. On the internet, all actions are inscriptions.

These trends work together to keep us stuck in a permanent past because they make it harder to follow different trajectories, to see meaning, to grow as people. It’s a world that rewards predicting over inventing.

3. On the internet, there is no present, only variously organized fragments of the past.

Identity is contextual and, if we are to live, breathe, and grow, it has to remain contextual. The Internet of the “authentic self” — a loathsome, aberrant idea if there ever was one — is an exercise in slowly getting strangled by your past selves.

If Luddism is simply the preference for agency over structures designed and coded by others, we’re going to need a bigger Ludd.

If you know to look, you can feel the difference between software crafted with care for its users and systems of vacuous tradition that just happen to be good at producing the vapid fodder of convenience.