Allison's bookmarks (tagged internet)

Most recent

No Escape: The Weaponization of Gender for the Purposes of Digital Transnational Repression - The Citizen Lab

"[T]he intersecting identities of those targeted by gender-based digital transnational repression – namely, their gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, and socio-economic class in the host country, among others – lead to compounded vulnerability. Exiled and diaspora women human rights defenders often lack robust social networks and support structures in their host societies, leaving them further isolated and exposed to state repression"

internet culture gender activism

The Encyclopedia Project, or How to Know in the Age of AI - Public Books

"[W]hat is currently sold to us as “Artificial Intelligence”... is neither intelligent nor entirely artificial, yet it’s pumping the internet with automated content more quickly than you can fire an editorial office. No system predicated on these assumptions can hope to discern “misinformation” from “information”: both are reduced to equally weighted packets of content, merely seeking an optimization function in a free marketplace of ideas. And both are equally ingested into a great statistical machinery, which weighs only our inability to discern."

epistemology ai text language internet culture

cohost! - "social alienation in We're All Going To The World's Fair"

"we go to the cinema to suspend our disbelief and imagine a fantastical world. it's the same drive that the protagonist feels. we want to believe that she is experiencing the supernatural, we want the tension to explode into something we can point to as the Monster, the Villain, the Dark Force. but it refuses to give us that, because reality doesn't give us that."

movies internet culture

About Bunny Fonts | Faster & GDPR friendly Fonts

"an open-source, privacy-first web font platform designed to put privacy back into the internet" with "a zero-tracking and no-logging policy" though it makes me nervous that there is no like... explanation of why they're doing this, and how they're paying for it, and how long it will last!

fonts typography design internet

Facebook's Threads is so depressing - by Jason O. Gilbert

"Have you ever been high/drunk and you walk into a CVS and the security guard is staring at you? That’s what Threads is. It’s deodorants locked behind plastic. It’s TikTok Hype Houses. It is Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. It’s a sneaker collab between Nike and JP Morgan. It’s your favorite stand-up comic showing up in a commercial for Carvana. "

socialmedia internet culture

The algorithmic anti-culture of scale - by Ryan Broderick

on Threads: "It’s like watching two large cryptocurrencies trade with each other. No cultural value is ever really generated, but the numbers go up. And these creators all operate with a nervous intensity that feels almost biblical, constantly jumping to and from recycled trends, hoping to please a finicky and vengeful god that treats them like an invasive species. And, save only a few, most of the Meta creators I’ve met seem to, in return, deeply loathe the content they make, the people who like it, and Meta, itself."

socialmedia culture internet

William Davies · The Reaction Economy · LRB 2 March 2023

"There’s an ambiguity here as to where the real value lies. Is the reaction testament to the value of the song (or the computer game, the Christmas present or whatever else)? Or is the artefact just an instrument used to provoke the impulsive emotional reaction? The simultaneity of artefact and response suggests a novel synthesis of criticism with behavioural experiment." [...] "reactionaries’ explicit purpose is to restructure society around ‘natural’ hierarchies of race and gender, and to dehumanise those who, for example, exercise the perilous freedom to cross the English Channel in a small boat." via https://www.metafilter.com/198362/The-Cult-of-Reaction

internet culture psychology cybernetics

Of Hegel jokes and hole-walls, or, why Twitter is good actually

"It’s really nice to be on the edge of a community... and to be able to smoothly transition inwards and outwards as time passes. My Twitter timeline is a record of my passing interests and side-projects.... Something in the structure of Twitter makes it ideal for this kind of mixing and matching, a lurker’s paradise. [...] By leaving communities implicit, Twitter allows for a much more nuanced sense of what it means to be part of something."

socialmedia internet

Pluralistic: 20 Oct 2022 It was all downhill after the Cuecat – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

'Once we gave companies the power to literally criminalize the reconfiguration of their products, everything changed. [...] [I]n a world of Felony Contempt of Business Model, that discussion changes to "Given that we can literally imprison anyone who helps our users get more out of this product, how can we punish users who are disloyal enough to simply quit our service or switch away from our product?"'

culture business internet technology

The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss

"The only reliable source of profits is in the extraction of raw materials: chiefly, pulling the black corpses of trillions of prehistoric organisms out of the ground so they can be set on fire. Which means that the feudal rulers of those corpselands—men like King Salman, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques—ended up sitting on a vast reservoir of capital without many productive industries through which it could be valorised. So, as a temporary solution, they stuck it in the tech sector."

internet culture history

Web3 is Bullshit

"We’ve gone from the world of abundance in cloud computing where the cost of compute time per person was nearly at post-scarcity levels, to the reverse of trying to enforce artificial scarcity on the most abundant resource humanity has ever created. This is regression, not progress."

cryptocurrency internet web economics

Creative Computing and Network Culture ~ Joachim Despland-Lichtert

"Imagine you go back in time to the 1970s to change the history of the internet to your own liking. Based on the events described in the reading, how would you do it? How much funding would you need to achieve the changes you seek? Where do you get that funding from at the time, and how difficult is it to obtain? What does your answer to these questions say about the “great man theory” of history?"

internet history culture technology web syllabus

Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile? - by Gordon Brander - Subconscious

"The basis of performance shifted from small binaries to smooth interaction. [...] Navigation shifted from keyboard to springboard. [...] Log-in disappeared completely. [...] Discovery shifted from search to app store. [...] Engagement shifted from links to icons. [...] Business models expanded to IAP, subscriptions, and app purchase. [...] Security shifted from sandbox to app review...."

software web history internet

Gemini Gateway

"Gemini is a new internet protocol which: Is heavier than gopher; Is lighter than the web; Will not replace either; Strives for maximum power to weight ratio; Takes user privacy very seriously"

internet software protocols web

The internet could learn a lot from the VR sign language community | Rock Paper Shotgun

"Even the fancier controllers of Valve’s Index kits don’t let you separate your fingers to produce the Ws or Vs necessary for some words. [...] It’s a lovely avenue of human connection, but I can also imagine linguists frothing over VR sign language. There’s a great example in Syrmor’s video where a currently learning interpreter called Quentin explains that because the W restriction means they can’t use the normal word for ‘world’, they instead mimic the appearance of a portal opening up in VR. They’ve also got different ways of signing words depending on your gear, which is both fascinating and mildly concerning." that must feel weird

mol asl language poetics vr internet