This is a really good essay. It’s got a mix of hopeful foresight and melancholy mourning for the internet we’ve lost. I can feel the tension you’re drawing between possibility and loss, and you do it with grace (is that a pun?).
Your three futures feel less like predictions and more like emergent archetypes, each one already starting to thread itself into the present. The hyper-personalized filter bubble especially struck me. It feels like something from a William Gibson novel, but also like something quietly happening all around us. A kind of soft totalitarianism, not imposed, just preferred into existence.
I’ve been working on a piece that dances alongside this one. It looks at the shift from truth-seeking to answer-summoning, how AI isn’t just assisting thought anymore, it’s replacing the need to think at all.
Thanks for this. We’re all trying to map the same coastline. Your compass is tuned to what matters.
This is a really good essay. It’s got a mix of hopeful foresight and melancholy mourning for the internet we’ve lost. I can feel the tension you’re drawing between possibility and loss, and you do it with grace (is that a pun?).
Your three futures feel less like predictions and more like emergent archetypes, each one already starting to thread itself into the present. The hyper-personalized filter bubble especially struck me. It feels like something from a William Gibson novel, but also like something quietly happening all around us. A kind of soft totalitarianism, not imposed, just preferred into existence.
I’ve been working on a piece that dances alongside this one. It looks at the shift from truth-seeking to answer-summoning, how AI isn’t just assisting thought anymore, it’s replacing the need to think at all.
Thanks for this. We’re all trying to map the same coastline. Your compass is tuned to what matters.
Looking forward to your next.