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What Happened to the New Internet?
As it turns out, not long ago there was a whole generation of technologists who aspired to fix the internet. Now, many of these individuals, a portion of which I'm lucky to call friends, don't seem to be very interested in the reformist game anymore. It feels like an entire vibrant movement has been smothered and memory-holed, and nothing has prove
... See moreBryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
The New Internet that's in question here probably began to coalesce in the early 2010s. At first, it emerged slowly, stewing in the public discontent that grew out of an increasingly powerful and extractive tech sector. Just as much as it was a professional stance, the reaction was a visceral one. Many users of the internet were beginning to notice
... See moreBryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
On another level, the story of the New Internet is a story of individuals and their psychologies. Over the last decade, technology workers have opened themselves up to a tremendous amount of value drift (the process in which previously steadfast values are compromised over time).
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
There’s a strong argument to be made that the most compelling solutions in the short history of the New Internet have been those that are the most commonplace, slow, ambient, and avoidant of hype. Products that actually work and will continue to.
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
By shape shifting between utopian global computer and Ponzi dispenser, crypto both indoctrinated New Internet practitioners and implicated them amongst a crowd of day traders that they otherwise would have been repulsed by. In crypto's effect on the New Internet, we see the subtle ways that access to capital can simultaneously accelerate and mutate... See more
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
By yielding a generational wealth creation opportunity that was a strange hybrid of a lottery jackpot and self-made fortune, crypto created an ideological hold on its early entrepreneurs and workers. It had all the euphoria of a gold rush and all the self esteem of high tech meritocracy.
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
Maybe the goal is not _the _New Internet, but a series of internets that live alongside a more mainstream, lackluster counterpart. As opposed to a monolithic archipelago these internets could be thought of as autonomous island nations that users jump between. Some of these islands will provide things that others can't. Some will have trade lines an... See more
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
For me personally, it would have meant the preemptive realization that many of the ideas we theorized at Other Internet had little feasibility beyond the thinkpieces they were contained within, not because they were bad ideas, but because they never had the agency to be implemented.
Bryan Lehrer • What Happened to the New Internet?
. I did marketing there, which basically amounted to drafting tweets that promoted a hypothetical product in unflinchingly positive terms. I remember on several occasions being reprimanded for not using enough emojis in my tweets.