Reflection 1
**The Internet’s Back-to-the-Land Movement**
The position that this article advocates for is unique and interesting. Living “off the grid” in the age of the internet implies one is disconnected from the web entirely, however, this article proposes a hybrid of smaller decentralized networks as “off the grid”. While in the context of the irl meat-space, exponential growth of the population is no doubt an issue that needs to be addressed on an environmental level—and for that I agree, Whole Earth Catalog and One-Straw Revolution return to our agricultural roots deals with this issue in an useful and legitimate way— I cannot say the same for that of WELL’s off-grid networks.
Commodification exists, and it is an evermore present threat to the online discourse as corporations change what was once low-entry, anonymous, open and free internet into highly commercialized, surveillanced experience it is today. In that way I can understand why smaller networks free us from the status-quo of opinions and capabilities that corporations and internet providers pigeon hold us to (and also of their disregard for energy use). However, I believe that the inherent interconnectedness we share using one network, while having its negatives, is ultimately something worth preserving. Ideas and information proliferate freely; with segmented networks however, communities stay divided— the do-gooders in the world might benefit from a space free from corporations and excessive energy use, but one can easily imagine how a segmented network or community of objectively bad opinions can fester and become a toxic eco-chamber. Simply take the example of parlor. That was on the public internet.
**On how to grow an idea**
“it is not we who are thinking, but rather the environment that is thinking through us.”
I think that this quote in the article strikes me as particularly insightful. Sometimes we are so transfixed in our special status as human beings and gloat in our individualism and uniqueness that we forget that we are like any other animal, insect or creature are in an environment. Its easy conceptualize monkey using a stick to catch ants to eat as a reaction of the monkey to the ants, and those two creatures to the larger environment— a set of actions or thoughts birthed from the environment. With us humans however, attribute about the ideas we come up to us alone as a spark of genius or innate ability. Even when we are inspired by nature, we think human-centrically; that achievement was only made possible by the creative talent of the person that made the connection. The shape of the bullet train head in the shinkansen was inspired by the beak of a bird. Perhaps we should praise the bird and the ecosystem it lives in just as much as the guy who thought to use its beak shape.
**Charles Broskoski on self-discovery that happens upon revisiting things you’ve accumulated over time**
Visiting [are.na](http://are.na), it strikes me to be very similar to boards like Dribble, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Frankly speaking, using the site is a little confusing, as it seems to deviate so much from typical board pages from its mode of discovering connection, that being mainly through user dictated connections to other blocks. This is certainly interesting in the sense that the flow of information isn’t curated by an algorithm but rather organically. Broskoski states that people and investors nowadays recognize the harm of algorithms that prioritize user retention and how negative that can be to mental health and creating meaningful social interaction. In this way, the differences between are.na and say pinterest seem clear. My experience in using pinterest is that it is almost too good in recommending me posts that are hyper-specific to my tastes. While I find use the pins it decides to show me, the algorithm exposes me to the aesthetics and graphics over and over again. Furthermore, I feel isolated from other users of the site like I’m exploring in my own little bubble. [Are.na](http://Are.na), while sometimes a bit more meander-y, connects me to radically diverging blocks. I am bewildered by some connections that users choose to connect, and sometimes it proves not useful for what I want to see. Other times, I am pleasantly surprised at the new tastes it has unlocked.
**On building knowledge networks**
When reading this article, I am reminded of older websites during the 90’s and its evolution to the present. Though I might not have been there in during the world wide web’s inception, I have still clicked around through archaic, css-less websites with sprinklings of clip art gifs as decoration. As an avid Neopets fan during elementary school, I found the exploration of different shops through image based hub-world charming. Information was seemingly dispersed at random, not categorized well and not always easy to access. In fact, I relied on guide websites that collected the most helpful links to shopkeepers I visited since the site itself required at least 5 or 6 clicks to travel to different regions, then towns to get to the shop that arguably should have taken one or two clicks. The flow and organization of information varied greatly between different sites. To me, it was part struggle, part adventure perusing through these sites.
Reflection 2
It’s really interesting how much of the internet played out. It’s also really interesting how justifications for decentralized/distributed networks are largely the same as they were nearly 30 years ago. Notions of security, of surveillance, of practicality, and of democratizations of data and information across multiple servers are echoed in the “History of the Internet”. So then, its interesting to see how centralization of information and users slowly creeped up in the last three decades from the internet’s seemingly libertarian and democratic roots.
My hypothesis is that decentralization and all of the values of “individual server gardens” that are tied along with it come at the cost of convenience, and largely only cared about by a small minority of usually internet and politically savy individuals. What I mean is that even though a large majority of people “care” about their internet security (as in they likely heard of ashley madison and wells fargo info leaks), the only people I know that use duckduckgo or vpn’s to protect themselves on the internet are coders. Simply put, as the internet became a more and more mainstream environment, the mainstream public preferred centralized databases because central servers are more convenient.
Thus, I find the evolution of the internet towards large corporations to be inevitable because as the web has gained a larger audience, those that care about personal websites are crowded out. I don’t mean to be pessimistic or dismissive of the rise of a return to smaller and more numerous information hubs. I truly see the value in allowing individuals to spread information without the control or influence of the platforms that exist today. Indeed, personal websites have a near infinite amount of variety and flavors as compared to a personal facebook or instagram page. In fact, I feel as if the public is slowly seeing the negative effects of centralization themselves. Data breaches, “Big Tech”, Addictive algorithms and their harm done on our mental states- these are only a few the problems that are more critically thrown out in discussions of our relationship with the internet. Here’s to hoping that as more people have there realizations, we’ll see a rise in more self-tended gardens around the web.
Reflection 3
I found the article of “All you need is Links” to be very interesting. To be honest, I had some difficulty in grasping the ideas of how links can be applied so broadly to replace grammar, but them again I was only thinking in terms of a piece of blue underlined text on a webpage. I find it fascinating that so many interactions can be “replaced” links, like how the author said that starring, hearting, upvoting can be replaced. I’d like to dwell on this topic for a little longer.
Inherently, liking something with a heart icon is super quantifiable. There is little ambiguity in the user meaning that they like this thing. Liking is different than an angry face react in facebook. These actions are distinguished from each other and highly defined. Linking however, as a means of communicating intent, is always going to be more vague. If an article has many sources linked to it from other webpages, surely it means that it is relevant, but good? bad? That is less certain. Certainly, you can attempt to trace back links to their original pages and determine the connection or relevance between the two, but inherently, there is ambiguity. Wether preciseness of communication should be traded for looser interpretation of communication is not something I can comment on.
Something else that strikes me as interesting is how seeing things as links inherently makes information more decentralized. Comments, hearts, emotes live and die one single post or web page, condensing all their information onto this one hub. Links however, spread information and opinions by virtue of opinion being wholly other bodies of information. In this way, links knit a vast and intricate web that seemingly, never leaves any node significantly more isolated than the rest.
Microseasons Brainstorm
Microseasons → Seasons → Time → Alternate Forms of Telling Time → Lunar/Solar Calendars → Units of time?? → Cycles → Menstrual Cycle
Microseasons → Nature → Growth → Isn’t Nature Arbitrary and Can’t be Defined by Segmented Days? → Appreciation of Nature → Nature as Functional Time → Japanese Mircoseasons as Appreciation or as Productivity?
Mircoseasons → Perceptions of Time → Arbitrary → Why do we choose to quantify time by exact, determinable units when our brain doesn’t operate in exactness?
Microseason → Units of Time → Arbitraty Unites of Time → Other “season” → Fashion Seasons → 20 Year Fashion Rule → Fast Fashion → Micro Trends → Micro Trend Seasons