Honestly one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a while. His thesis is that the early days of the Web (hypertext) were headed toward a “garden” approach, where humans collaboratively curated and organized knowledge for broad consumption.
But what we’ve ended up with is a “stream,” like the FB timeline you’re reading right now. Blogging, social media – these are individualistic and competitive; they’re about adding a piece of knowledge to a biased pile that I’m constantly building for myself.
The ethics of information management, of civic discourse, of the Internet — it’s all in this essay. This may be one of my favorite reads in a while (and it’s from 2016, so I’m super late to the party here) because he not only identifies one of the elements making Internet discourse so toxic, he’s also identifying potential paths toward a solution….. if people will have them.
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