Worried about what’s out there about you? You’re not alone. But is it even possible to become a digital ghost?
'I felt exposed online': how to disappear from the internet
Worried about what’s out there about you? You’re not alone. But is it even possible to become a digital ghost?
Death of the private self: how fifteen years of Facebook changed the human condition
In 2004, the social network site was set up to connect people. But now, with lives increasingly played out online, have we forgotten how to be alone?
Is anyone out there?
Dead Internet Theory says that you’re the only human left online. It started out as a conspiratorial joke, but it is edging ever closer to reality
we were online
Turn the internet into a living, shared space with real-time traces of people browsing.
No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior
Electronic media present us with a collage of experiences from everyplace. We eat dinner at home while watching starving children thousands of miles away reach out to us for food. From our easy chairs, we stare at blindfolded hostages, and coolly
Beyond the Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
Re-learning how to be yourself online
A Short History Of The Internet
I am not by any measure old unless you ask my nieces, but I remember when we had no internet and my niece's minds boggle at that, they think I must be ancient. How could you survive without the internet they asked me, in their minds the concept of no internet is pretty much science fiction and the thought of not having internet access scares them.
Blue Skies Ahead: Social Media's Quiet User Revolution
In a digital landscape increasingly defined by user concerns over privacy and control, a quiet revolution is taking shape.
Digital Echoes and Unquiet Minds - Christopher Butler
There's a psychological burden of digital life even heavier than distraction.
The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace
Interpreting the myths of the digital age: why we believed in the power of cyberspace to open up a new world.The digital era promises, as did many other te
the chronically online will become a new underclass
A Theory of Messaging Styles & Ghosting.
Online communication tools serve many purposes. So does silence.
Lisa Nakamura: The internet is a trash fire. Here's how to fix it.
Life on the internet is real life, and we need to stop pretending that what happens online doesn't matter, says digital media researcher Lisa Nakamura. In this timely talk, she explains the steps we can take to correct the toxic behaviors that have become common online -- and help make the internet a place where we all feel safe.
Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams
I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…
The snake eating its own tail effect of AI agents isn’t so much a problem of training data model collapse as the collapse of the social epistemic foundations by which human sense-making can be carried out at all—and which AI agents *also* rely on for whatever facsimile of sense-making they conduct.
Ryan McGrady
The original: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-co… and the context: theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-p… I hope they elaborate on the retraction, too, though I'm glad they acted quickly to take it down (and hope they put more effort into covering this terrifying story, since it's in their wheelhouse)
