A social knowledge network for creators

How I built Fluxer, a Discord-like chat app

Fluxer is a free and open source instant messaging and VoIP platform built for friends, groups, and communities.

An attention economic perspective on the future of the information age

In this paper, we apply an attention economic perspective to explain current and predict future trends in our society. We first describe the rise of the attention economy, and we highlight one important mechanism of this economy: a spiral of attention scarcity. Second, we show that an attention economic perspective provides glimpses of a potential future. In particular, we predict an information environment that increasingly targets citizens with attention-grabbing content, form, and technology; a continuing trend toward excessive media consumption levels; and a continuing trend toward inattentive uses of information. We also predict increasing problems of public misinformation and misconceptions; an increased prevalence of certain mental and physical health issues; and an increased reliance on technology to perform mental tasks. At the end of this paper, we show why and how despite these predictions, alternative futures are conceivable. These alternatives largely depend on the behavior of various social actors. We discuss resistance to the attention economy by consumers and producers, a laissez-faire policy toward the attention economy, a policy of taxing attention-seeking efforts, and the promotion of public values in regulatory policies toward the internet.

What happened to Science Goodreads and how do we rebuild it? A 65 million dollar question (at least)

Cosmik awarded $1M grant from Open Philanthropy and Astera Institute for new social knowledge networ…

The attention market—and what is wrong with it

Attention is described as a “scarce commodity” that is traded in “a marketplace.” This, it is further claimed, contributes to a “widespread sense of attentional crisis.” But is there really an attention market, and if so, what, if anything, is wrong with it? We defend the claim that there are markets in attention. We provide an account of such attention markets and use that account to address what is morally wrong with them. Our account draws on knowledge of how attention works and what roles it plays in the mind. The attention market trades in an ability to influence our attention – somewhat (though not exactly) like the labor market trades in an ability to influence how we use our capacity for work. Specifically, the commodity it trades in is attentional landscaping potential, viz. the ability to systematically influence patterns of attention by changes to the sensory environment individuals are exposed to. Attention markets thus, we argue, commodify influence over a human capacity that plays a central role in shaping individual experience, agency, and belief formation. This feature of attention markets makes them ethically problematic. As markets in access to external influence, attention markets pose a special threat to individual autonomy and escape the classical liberal defense of free markets. Those who value autonomy should worry about the attention markets that exist today.

The pitch deck is dead. Write a pitch.md instead.

Every week, thousands of founders open Canva or Google Slides or, God help them, PowerPoint, and begin the ritual. They agonize over fonts, nudge logos three pixels to the left and workshop whether the TAM slide should come before or after the team slide, as though the ordering of these

FR#153 – What does a Discord replacement look like?

With Discord announcing age verification globally, people are searching for alternatives. But a Discord alternative on the open social web might just look structurally quite different.

Stonking

Stonking people. Stonking conversations. Stonking social media and news.

Demoing the AI computer that doesn't yet exist

What happens if you take the idea that AI is going to revolutionize computing seriously? We built a demo to find out — with generative interfaces, deep personalization, and voice as a first-class input.