Other Internet

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

The Extended Internet Universe

The Internet is now a very complicated place

The Extended Internet Universe

The Internet is now a very complicated place

The Public Interest Internet

What if the internet were public interest technology? Is that too wildly speculative? I think not. I am not talking about a utopian project here — a public interest internet would be a glorious imperfect mess and it would be far from problem-free. But while there is a lot of solid thinking about various digital issues or pieces of internet infrastructure (much of which I rely upon here), I have yet to read to an answer to this question: What global digital architecture should we assemble if we take seriously the idea that the internet should be public interest technology?

Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era

The grand idealism of the free and open internet might be over for now, but in its place falls a more practical mindset. Just like Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs are entering their “Hard Tech” era, the people building web alternatives are also entering their Post-Naive Era. Here are the names to know.

Beyond APIs: Collecting Web Data for Research using the National Internet Observatory

Widespread Internet use offers unprecedented opportunities to study human behavior at scale, yet researchers face significant ethical and technical barriers when attempting to collect data for academic studies.

AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

[39c3] Auf die Dauer hilft nur Power: Herausforderungen für dezentrale Netzwerke aus Sicht der Soziologie

Die Soziologie hat immer etwas mitzuteilen, sobald Fragen kollektiven Handelns auftreten. Dies gilt sowohl für soziale wie auch digitale Räume. So hat der Soziologe Peter Kollock bereits in den 1990er Jahren festgestellt, „the Internet is filled w...

The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

A BlueSky thread by Jay Patel on Skyview

#SciComment I'm curious to know... ❓If you evaluate papers online using PubPeer, blogs, microblogging services, personal websites, etc... why do you like certain technologies over others? 🤔 What prevents you from using PubPeer or ResearcHub instead of other transient or hard-to-find platforms?

What Was the Internet?

As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.

What Was the Internet?

As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.