How did the internet disrupt 20th century timekeeping systems and spark an insurgence of alternative historical narratives? How do old media institutions try (and fail) to keep up with the narratives of online subcultures? How does the immediate accessibility of so many alt histories undermine our ability to create shared visions of the future? And how might a more ecological awareness of the internet help us adapt to our disorienting digital time machines?| aaronzlewis.com
[EDIT 2/13/21: This post is originally from June 2020, but there’s been renewed interest in it because the NYT article involved just came out. This post says the NYT was going to write a posi…| Slate Star Codex
American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.| www.nytimes.com
One effect of our digital media environment, then, is to immerse us in searchable databases of information rather than present us with comprehensive, integrated, and broadly compelling narratives.| theconvivialsociety.substack.com
You’ve heard me talk about crash-only programming, right? It’s a programming paradigm for critical infrastructure systems, where there is — by design — no graceful way to shut down. A program can only crash and try to recover from a crashed state, which might well be impossible. I came up with a term for the human version: beef-only thinking. | ribbonfarm