The book 1.0
Susan Leigh Star, a sociologist and theorist of infrastructure and networks, wrote in her 1999 influential paper, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”:
“Study a city and neglect its sewers and power supplies (as many have), and you miss essential aspects of distributional justice and planning power. Study an information system and neglect its standar... See more
“Study a city and neglect its sewers and power supplies (as many have), and you miss essential aspects of distributional justice and planning power. Study an information system and neglect its standar... See more
Maria Farrell • We Need to Rewild the Internet
A few years ago, a user by the name of IlluminatiPirate published Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake on the online forum Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe.1 The theory proposes that the majority of the content with which we engage online is algorithmically generated by bots, all in an effort to control what we believe. I feel obligated to... See more
Gaby Goldberg • Making the Internet Alive Again
What kind of memetic monsters evolve in a primordial stew made of fractalized identities, multipolar geopolitics and viral media? Conspiracy theories, of course.
Neural Interpellation
Screenshotting as one of the essential underrated tools of the digital age - the equivalent of inventing cameras for the physical world, so we can take “pictures” of everything happening around us in the digital realm, and share + discuss it
nadia.xyz • Nadia Eghbal
The belief that the Earth is flat is not in and of itself problematic for most people, since most people will never need to circumnavigate the globe. However, the effects on adherents’ social relationships are problematic. The belief both signals and generates frame shear, the lack of mutual intelligibility, with all except those who share it—meani... See more
Everyone’s Existential Crisis
The real breakthroughs that enabled the revival of the 1,000 True Fans model are better understood as cultural. The rise in both online news paywalls and subscription video-streaming services trained users to be more comfortable paying à la carte for content. When you already shell out regular subscription fees for newyorker.com, Netflix, Peacock, ... See more
Cal Newport • The Rise of the Internet’s Creative Middle Class
t’s key to research the need for an idea, not only focus on the solution, but what it actually solves. Get intimate with that problem and its many dimensions, understand how it shows up in people’s lives.
Charlotte Hochman, co-founder & Director of Wow!Labs
Is it clear to you when a trend forecast is coming from amateurs versus the professionals?
ES: I mean, no. I think an amateur and a professional have kind of an equal chance at hitting the nail on the head. True flashes of cultural insight happen where you’re lucky enough to just put the right words against the cultural phenomenon at the right momen... See more
ES: I mean, no. I think an amateur and a professional have kind of an equal chance at hitting the nail on the head. True flashes of cultural insight happen where you’re lucky enough to just put the right words against the cultural phenomenon at the right momen... See more