It's clear upon inspection that the media narrative about an influx of Russian or otherwise foreign bots influencing politics in America is built on flimsy data and enormous leaps of logic. Further, the narrative empowers conspiracy theorists to make essentially whatever claims they want about anyone. The bots that do exist are drops of water in the ocean of social media, but I believe that the effect of constant front-page news stirring up fear about foreign influence can have far-reaching negative effects on any democracy.

Hope is elusive, but it will return eventually. What I’m afraid of, this December, are the conditions that allow hope to take hold. I’m worried that the “worst year ever” feeling is half a condition of the Internet, of the way we experience the news as delivered through social media. Everything feels too intimate, too aggressive; the interfaces that were intended to cheerfully connect us to the world have instead spawned fear and alienation. I’m worried that this sense of relentless emotional bombardment will escalate no matter what’s in the news.

Absent that microfilmed archive, maybe Donald Trump could have kept insinuating that Barack Obama had in fact been born in Kenya, and granting sufficient political corruption, that lie might at some later date have become official history. Because history is a fight we’re having every day. We’re battling to make the truth first by living it, and then by recording and sharing it, and finally, crucially, by preserving it. Without an archive, there is no history.

The lesson of that kind of reading is a simple one. It has taught me that my own life is ephemeral. Despite all the heroic myths about the unique, irreplaceable preciousness of our daily lives, I am absolutely convinced that someone, someday 50 or 100 years from now, will be working at a computer near where I am seated right now, and he or she will come across the address of my office mentioned in this article—902 Broadway—and will read with amusement or wonder or puzzlement about my experiences. I greet you, and the people who follow you, and the ones after them, and I hope that I give you a moment’s satisfaction, and that you take as much pleasure from your search as I did.

In an age where we interact primarily with branded and marketed web content, Cameron’s World is a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the Internet. This project recalls the visual aesthetics from an era when it was expected that personal spaces would always be under construction.

If your goal is to fix this broken medium, please consider that, historically, people have relied on different media for different social purposes, and have relied on a clear understanding of how the technical properties of each medium determine the social and temporal scope of its messages.

“‘Archives are not just places people go for information; they can and do change our approach to, and determine the questions we ask of, music, the music industry and musical scenes.’”

Rap Genius is the newest example in a long tradition of black music explained for whites, now with a neoliberal twist.

Our consciousness and memory are moving into the ether, so the need for our senses is diminished. And the interface for this transformation turned out to be text.

‘The Democracy Gap is a great chasm between this “hearing and deliberative” part of government (what people like to call “Washington”), and the rest of human civilization, and activists — left, right, and orthogonal are beginning to figure this out, and it’s beginning to really tick them off. People are using the internet to become increasingly more organized, but at the same time are becoming more and more disconnected from the mechanics of power inside Washington. Moreover, as the volume of voices grows louder, “Washington” becomes more disconnected — unable to hear the best solutions from the cacophony of noise.’

The world and the technology by which we take it in is becoming more and more "addictive" and what can we do about it? A concerted effort to stick to basics and saying no, says Paul Graham.

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

This guy seems to have some family issues that his addiction to incoming data via screens is severely aggravating. I experience, on a smaller scale, some of the problems outlined in this article, and, though none of this is particularly new to me, it's frightening to see these habits taken down the slippery slope. Should all of us, and especially people like Kord, make a concerted effort to make screens less a part of our lives, lest we lose our humanity? Or is trying to avoid technology's increasing integration with our every second just being traditionally biased and counter-progressive? I think there is a middle ground where one can be hooked in and focused on doing work while still not ignoring ones' children. Food for thought.

What 'the web' actually is, and why building desktop-class applications on it is not what it was built for.

Sifting through HRO's sorta-haughty satire is worth it for the occasion post like this, where whoever Carles is gets tired of mocking teenagers and writes something true and intriguing about the state of the music industry and popular music culture (at least for the indie set).

Basically: Publishing solves a problem that no longer exists, and we don't need newspapers; we need journalism. Amen.

Short, irreverent, accurate, and funny.

A history of Amazon's site design, and a preview of what's next.