Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #67
Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #67
From a more human-run internet to invisible pollution, earth embodied, the enshittocene and motorists winning
As I’ve had quite a lot of new people join the newsletter since last week’s issue, a quick clarification for all new subscribers:
I always send out two e-mails per week. The Wednesday e-mail is a curation-focused issue called “Rabbit Holes” which highlights three highly thought-provoking articles, plus some other interesting recent finds from across the web. The Friday issue is where I attempt to synthesize various thoughts and insights into a deep dive that explores a reframing of sorts, usually linked to a bigger zeitgeist shift I am seeing.
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THIS WEEK → 👾 Human-Run Internet 🔊 Invisible Pollution 🧘♂️ Earth Embodied ➕ The Enshittocene 🚿 The Motorists Won
Rabbit Holes 🕳️
As always, here are three perspective-shifting ideas to rewild your mind and help you create a better world, plus some extras below. Enjoy!
#1 👾 A More Human-Run Internet
I’ve recently written quite a bit about the problems of modern technology and what I sense is a looming anti-tech (or at least tech overload) sentiment within society. One key positive implication of that is presented in the following article, namely a return to a more human-run, personal-scale, and diverse internet.
“IT’S A DRAMATIC, messy era on the internet. Everything is changing rapidly. […] But more than anything, it is a time when the internet seems ripe for change, perhaps even being wide open to a new cohort of technologies and communities that could reshape the way it works. Millions of people seem poised to connect with each other in new ways, as they reconsider their fundamental relationship to technology.
[…] This new year offers many echoes of a moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century. Some of the most dominant companies on the internet are at risk of losing their relevance, and the rest of us are rethinking our daily habits in ways that will shift the digital landscape as we know it. […] We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before. […]
For an entire generation, the imagination of people making the web has been hemmed in by the control of a handful of giant companies that have had enormous control over things like search results, or app stores, or ad platforms, or payment systems. Going back to the more free-for-all nature of the Nineties internet could mean we see a proliferation of unexpected, strange new products and services. Back then, a lot of technology was created by local communities or people with a shared interest, and it was as likely that cool things would be invented by universities and non-profits and eccentric lone creators as they were to be made by giant corporations. […]
It was a more democratized internet, and while the world can’t return to that level of simplicity, we’re seeing signs of a modern revisiting of some of those ideas. […]
For those who remember a time in the last century when things were less homogenous, and different geographic regions might have their own distinct music scenes or culinary traditions, it’s easy to understand the appeal of an online equivalent to different, connected neighborhoods that each have their own vibe. […]
We’re seeing the biggest return to that human-run, personal-scale web that we’ve witnessed since the turn of the millennium, with enough momentum that it’s likely that 2024 is the first year since then that many people have the experience of making a new connection or seeing something go viral on a platform that’s being run by a regular person instead of a commercial entity. It’s going to make a lot of new things possible. […]
There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet. And they should be weird.”
» Rolling Stone | The Internet is About To Get Weird Again by Anil Dash
#2 🔊 Invisible Pollution
Noise pollution is, in spite of its negative impact, an often ignored or accepted reality of car-centric cities – I’ve previously shared an interesting video aptly named “cities aren’t loud, cars are”. The bigger issue here, in my opinion, is articulated in a somewhat lonely sentence in the middle of the article: “There’s the need for a literal grounding in space; one we rarely realize we’re missing.” When our surroundings – or more broadly: the world – messes with our senses, it’s hard for us to ground ourselves, i.e. to be really present and connected.
“Noise is a potent pollutant, affecting both humans and animals, with transportation and especially cars (not pickleball) the most pervasive culprits. Just as carbon-spewing combustion engines sully the atmosphere and headlights prick the night sky, the low, complex sound spectra generated by motors and the friction of tires on pavement have profoundly altered the Earth’s acoustic environment.
The World Health Organization associates chronic exposure to noise with “sleep disturbance, cardiovascular effects, poorer work and school performance, hearing impairment” and other adverse outcomes in people. The consequences of unwanted sound are equally grave in the natural world. Its pressures on songbirds — who rely on sound to reproduce — are particularly well studied. […] If “birds can’t continue to sing, they can’t reproduce,” […].
Singing isn’t generally considered essential to human reproduction (though music helps). Otherwise, we react to noise pollution in similar ways to birds. […] We tend to speak at a higher pitch when we’re having trouble being understood. Loud, constant sound wreaks havoc on our concentration. Try to remember the verses to your favorite song near an airport while planes are taking off; try to read a novel on top of a highway overpass. You’ll understand why birds struggle. […]
But while there is no easy, overarching solution for our thunderous present, many ways of muting the problem already exist. As with climate change itself, we have the remedies. The hard part is applying them. […]
There’s the need for a literal grounding in space; one we rarely realize we’re missing. […]
Sound is invisible, which can make it easy to ignore. A simple first step to combating noise pollution is to conceive of it as physical pollution — with all the ugliness of crushed beer cans in the forest — and to take similar care to avoid it.”
» Noema | The Potent Pollution Of Noise by Jeffrey Arlo Brown
#3 🧘♂️ Earth Embodied
Shifting from a perspective on the human body from being commodified and treated as a machine for productivity and profit to viewing it as an integral part of nature, as earth embodied, creates a crucial sense of belonging while encouraging a shift away from systems of control and domination. If you haven’t read last week’s piece about Rehabilitating Humanity, do check it out!
“In our relentless push for productivity and profit, it is often said that our bodies have become commodities. At work, our worth is described in market terms: productivity, efficiency, asset. At leisure, our attention span is mined, and our emotions are monetized. Even our exhaustion has become profitable—apps like Calm and Headspace have made billions of dollars from their promise to help us manage it.
But as capitalism works hard to reframe our bodies as machines that require perpetual investment, Abigail Rose Clarke’s newly-released book, Returning Home to Our Bodies, emerges as a refreshing counter-narrative. Instead, it urges readers to reevaluate our relationship with the body, with nature, with community—and ultimately, with self. […]
[Abigail Rose Clarke:] Doing the difficult work of reconnecting with the Earth, especially in its dire straits, amid grief, chaos, and prolonged destruction, is not the easy path. I want to make it clear that this work is not easy. But there is some ease that does come from returning to the fact that we are actually nature; that we do belong to the forests and the mountains and the rivers; that we are mirrored in them; that our lymph nodes look like watersheds.
There is some ease to that rather than thinking of ourselves solely as a problem or a plague. When you realize that you’re more of the natural world, you are reoriented towards something beautiful. I think that’s really important. […]
Once we realize that we’re not alone and not working as machines—but as Earth embodied—then our actions and relationships are going to look different. This perspective informs our activism and reduces the likelihood of reverting to systems of control and domination. As Grace Lee Boggs says, it’s about revolutionary evolution—becoming more humane human beings. And that means returning to the Earth as self.”
» Atmos | Why Our Bodies Matter by Daphne Chouliaraki Milner (interviewing Abigail Rose Clarke, author of Returning Home to Our Bodies)
➕ Extras
“The point that McLuhan makes […] is that these mediums change you. The fundamental way they affect society is that while you're looking at the content you're actually absorbing the rules and structure and ways of communicating and relating of the medium. And it is that set of underlying rules, like that way the medium acts upon you, that's much much more important.”
Ezra Klein talking about Marshal McLuhan’s famous “The medium is the message” theory on the Search Engine podcast (around minute 12)
“Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous and local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries. […] ‘I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives while addressing the sustainability crisis.’”
Isolated Indigenous people as happy as wealthy western peers – study by Rupert Neate
“We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying. [Enshittification] describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?”
’Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything by Cory Doctorow
“As I watched the [AI] hype cycle unfold, my mind wasn’t drawn to old memories of Apple keynotes or the shimmering excitement of the first dotcom boom. Instead, I thought about cults. […] Perhaps this feels like a reach. But the deeper you dive into the people — and subcultures that are pushing AI forward — the more cult dynamics you begin to notice.”
The Cult of AI by Robert Evans
🚿 Shower Thoughts
“Amidst a political landscape where the ‘war on motorists’ is wielded as a populist tool, this series captures a future where this rhetoric has prevailed.” Kyle Branchesi
That’s it for this week’s Wednesday issue!
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