Home Is Where the Bits Flow
Metadata
Highlights
- We aren’t purely physical beings.
Most of our day exists outside our body. Our minds slip out through our eyes, out into our screens. We become a different kind of organism, living in a weird symbiosis with reddit and whatsapp and gmail.
- But we’re in the dark and we’re fumbling. We’re children too soon given the tools of war, and we don’t know which end explodes. When I was young society believed Doom was going to make us violent. We were wrong. It was social media that hurt us - tween girls given new ways to bully each other into insecurity. The Like button was invented to share positivity. There’s the bomb, weaponised by our neuroticism.
- Change my perspective click by click until we all become Portland, burning from the inside out. Each of us quietly gaslit into the closest prison for our minds. Neighbours brought to violence by a million insidious suggestions, whispered one refresh at a time. Make no mistake; a film is created in the editing room. So too your digital life.
- If we treated the physical like we do the virtual, corporate America would own the footpaths and the roads we walk on. In every country and every city, they would own the ground and own sky. Generously paid for by personalised ads streamed from the first moment, while the roads twist and wind until we lose ourselves. Don’t like it? Leave. You’re free to be disconnected. But you’ll be alone. After all, all your friends are lost in here too. Don’t like it? This is not a democracy. There is no election. You do not pick the algorithm. You aren’t a citizen and you aren’t the customer. You deliver the product - your attention. Sold to the highest bidder. Somebody has to pay for all these servers and it isn’t you.
- The internet has space for a million flowers to bloom. We can create anything. If this electric place is to be our sometimes home, we aught to decorate. But how? How do we fill our strange rectangles of glass with interactions that nurture and care for us?
- The challenge of our generation is to create an internet that helps us care for each other, not fight on the streets. The internet that informs with facts not fake news. The internet that is a bicycle, not a railroad for the mind.
title: “Home Is Where the Bits Flow”
author: “josephg.com”
url: ”https://josephg.com/blog/home-is-where-the-bits-flow/”
date: 2023-12-19
source: hypothesis
tags: media/articles
Home Is Where the Bits Flow
Metadata
Highlights
- We aren’t purely physical beings.
Most of our day exists outside our body. Our minds slip out through our eyes, out into our screens. We become a different kind of organism, living in a weird symbiosis with reddit and whatsapp and gmail.
- But we’re in the dark and we’re fumbling. We’re children too soon given the tools of war, and we don’t know which end explodes. When I was young society believed Doom was going to make us violent. We were wrong. It was social media that hurt us - tween girls given new ways to bully each other into insecurity. The Like button was invented to share positivity. There’s the bomb, weaponised by our neuroticism.
- Change my perspective click by click until we all become Portland, burning from the inside out. Each of us quietly gaslit into the closest prison for our minds. Neighbours brought to violence by a million insidious suggestions, whispered one refresh at a time. Make no mistake; a film is created in the editing room. So too your digital life.
- If we treated the physical like we do the virtual, corporate America would own the footpaths and the roads we walk on. In every country and every city, they would own the ground and own sky. Generously paid for by personalised ads streamed from the first moment, while the roads twist and wind until we lose ourselves. Don’t like it? Leave. You’re free to be disconnected. But you’ll be alone. After all, all your friends are lost in here too. Don’t like it? This is not a democracy. There is no election. You do not pick the algorithm. You aren’t a citizen and you aren’t the customer. You deliver the product - your attention. Sold to the highest bidder. Somebody has to pay for all these servers and it isn’t you.
- The internet has space for a million flowers to bloom. We can create anything. If this electric place is to be our sometimes home, we aught to decorate. But how? How do we fill our strange rectangles of glass with interactions that nurture and care for us?
- The challenge of our generation is to create an internet that helps us care for each other, not fight on the streets. The internet that informs with facts not fake news. The internet that is a bicycle, not a railroad for the mind.