An illustrated diagram exposing the inner layers of the dark and cozy web
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
A book about how to survive on the internet. It’s about the cozy web, the dark web, the dark forest, the clear net, the dark net, and a new social world emerging around us. This is the Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet.
Enter the Dark Forest
If you’ve managed to find your way here, you are likely familiar with the Dark Forest Theory of the Internet. You may not yet know it by name but you know it by vibe. Dark Forests are online gathering spaces that are non-indexed, non-optimized and hidden from public view. They are typically hosted in
Cozy Community Software — Open Indie
As Commune edges closer to an early-access release, I've been musing on the concept of the cozy web vibes that we intend to cultivate in ...
Federating friendly spaces - Roomy
hearkening back to the cozy vibes of old-web neighborhoods
Gradients of intimacy and creating shelter: An interview with Erin Kissane
How might we use nature as an inspiration for creating online communities?
Against the dark forest
The complex of ideas I’m going to call the Dark Internet Forest emerges from mostly insidery tech thinking, but from multiple directions.
Spatial Web Browsing
Adding spatial affordances to the experience of browsing the web
Semble — Make sense of the web, together
A place for mapping the web, connecting ideas, and building shared knowledge.
How the Web Was Lost – James Gleick
This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Webby Tim Berners-Lee with Stephen WittFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 389 pp., $30
A Bestiary of the Digital Wilds: The Score - Astral's Blog
Cameron's World
🌍 A web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of GeoCities.
Building in the dark forest
We write from our new home in the Dark Forest. This week we fully committed to our new universe: we abandoned Slack and moved all operations into DFOS, our new tool, available more widely in the coming weeks. It feels good in here. Calm. Cozy. Just enough activity for things
Toward Wayfinding Infrastructure for the Living Web · Atlas Research Group
Our world is getting crazier by the day. Our old maps and compasses weren’t made for this complexity. While new tools may open up amazing possibilities, they also make it easier to lose ourselves – especially when they don’t belong to us, and make us vulnerable to other people’s hidden choices and unsavory intentions about what is worth attending to.
The web we lost
A melancholy reflection about what happened to the web mixed with some positive imagination about to do about it.
What Was the Internet?
Google Reader was building the wrong future
We Build On Hope @ PublicSpaces Conference 2026
Against the dark forest
J. R. Carpenter || A Handmade Web
The web was always about redistribution of power. Let's bring that back.