Heat Death of the Internet

Enumerating all the ways the internet currently sucks. Example:

You buy a microwave and receive ads for microwaves. You buy a mattress and receive ads for mattresses.

No one wants this.

The article does end on a positive note:

You read the Wikipedia entry and there is a lot of useful information supplied by a community. One of the sources cited is a non-fiction book. You go to your local library’s website and although they don’t have the exact book, they do have others by the same author. You place a hold on two of them, then go get your shoes on.

/via Chris Glass

How a Connecticut middle school won the battle against cellphones (🎁 link)

Gabe Silver, another eighth-grader, echoed that sentiment. When the pouches first arrived, “everyone was miserable and no one was talking to each other,” he said. Now he can hear the difference at lunch and in the hallways. It’s louder. Students are chatting more “face to face, in person,” Gabe said. “And that’s a crucial part of growing up.”

I know there has been pushback against The Anxious Generation’s use of research, but I tend to agree with Zoë Schiffer from Platformer. Too much phone time (for kids or adults) just feels bad:

At the same time, we shouldn’t set aside the lived experiences of so many everyday smartphone users. For many of us, constant connectivity feels bad, and doomscrolling can heighten feelings of anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, getting outside and spending time with loved ones face to face can be the antidote to despair. I’m sympathetic to researchers who call attention to that dynamic, even if disputes remain about which claims are grounded in unassailable evidence.

Is the kottke.org comment section the best community on the web? I’m not a member yet, but I have been a lurker and it seems like a great place to hang out digitally.

Some things for week 16 of 2024.

• Anyone else enjoy looking at the tracking details of a package. Watching an item wend it’s way through a system of warehouses, trucks / trains, and multiple states. Maybe I’m the only shipping infrastructure nerd out here.

• “And yet, making observations is a good starting point for giving feedback. The trouble arises when we assume that those observations are both the start and the end, that we’re walking along a very short track.” From What you see by Mandy Brown. Can I say how much I appreciate everything changes? Lot’s of thoughtful writing!

• The website for the restaurant, Madeline’s is just so great. I was thinking the receipt concept would break down with deeper navigation, but nope!

• Lake Superior should really be considered an inland sea that is “wild, masterful, and dreaded.”

• Ok, I want this van.

The Analog Web: “Owning your own piece of the Internet (to borrow a recent phrase from Anil Dash) is itself a radical act. Linking to others at will is subversive all on its own.”

Paper and pencil: “The tool which allows you to plan, record, create, schedule, sketch, brainstorm and write a love note. Never be without the pair.”

The Death of the Follower: “Something that’s not contorting our online personas in the image of the algorithm to reach ~10% more strangers who probably don’t care, and won’t stick around.”

We Need More Calm Companies: “The path to success isn’t to “grind harder” but to build products that people want that you can sell with healthy profit margins.”

The truth is that whether or not AI determines our future will be decided by a confoundingly small minority of humans who nevertheless control a counfoundingly vast majority of the world’s wealth. This is not a technology issue, really, but one of structural inequality.

From Out Random the AI.

See also, Jon Stewart on the False Promises of AI

“Night Driving” for Volkswagen. Man, I forgot ads used to have the capacity to be amazing. See “Milky Way” also for Volkswagen. Via @genmon on accessing something other: “escape time, escape selfhood, whether that’s driving in the dark or sitting in a hotel lobby or walking.”