One Million Screenshots
huge birds' eye overview of websites, screenshots
An alternative to the bullshit industrial complex
Keeping the web weird
Exapt existing infrastructure
The internet is one of the greatest open-ended technologies our species has created, up there with language, writing, money, math, markets. How do you design something like an internet? How does it get bootstrapped? How does it grow, scale, and evolve into the kind of ecosystem we have today? How did this internet succeed, when
Here are the adoption curves for a handful of major technologies in the United States. There are big differences in the speeds at which these technologies were absorbed. Landline telephones took about 86 years to hit 80% adoption.Flush toilets took 96 years to hit 80% adoption.Refrigerators took about 25 years.Microwaves took 17 years.Smartphones took just 12 years.Why these wide differences in adoption speed? Conformability with existing infrastructure. Flush toilets required the build-out of water and sewage utility systems. They also meant adding a new room to the house—the bathroom—and running new water and sewage lines underneath and throughout the house. That’s a lot of systems to line up. By contrast, refrigerators replaced iceboxes, and could fit into existing kitchens without much work. Microwaves could sit on a countertop. Smartphones could slip into your pocket.
How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire
Our democratic habits have been killed off by an internet kleptocracy that profits from disinformation, polarization, and rage. Here’s how to fix that.
Tocqueville reckoned that the true success of democracy in America rested not on the grand ideals expressed on public monuments or even in the language of the Constitution, but in these habits and practices.
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet | WIRED
People used to think the crowdsourced encyclopedia represented all that was wrong with the web. Now it's a beacon of so much that's right.
Building your own website is cool again, and it's changing the whole internet
Writers, creators and businesses of all kinds are looking to set up their own space online again. To do that, companies are trying to figure out how to deal with two very different internets.