Future of the Internet

What do I want the future of the Internet to look like?

Last updated 2024 May 19 | More of my big questions

Sub-questions

  • What do I want out of the Internet?
  • What’s a better way to use the Internet?
  • How can I support the independent web?
  • What are the social norms around blogging and online interactions?
  • How can human-powered curation and discovery work in a genAI era with endless content?

Bookshelf

Related books I’ve read since 2021. Links go to my book review.


Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free
👍
by Cory Doctorow
(non-fiction)
2024-02-25

Ways of Curating

by Hans Ulrich Obrist
(art, curation)
2024-02-18

Stolen Focus

by Johann Hari
(non-fiction, society)
2023-07-31

The Shallows
👍👍
by Nicholas Carr
(non-fiction, technology)
2023-03-16

Podcasts + Videos

Articles

Articles or longer responses I’ve written. Grouped in roughly reverse chronological order. Stars mark what I think are the best or most interesting pieces, in retrospect.

Blogging

The indie web vs. the corporate web

Community online + the IndieWeb

AI and the web

Politics + activism + culture online

Technologies, platforms + preferences

Notes

Bookmarks and quotes from articles I’ve read. Roughly reverse chronological order.

7 replies on “Future of the Internet”

I’m a sci-fi writer and graphic designer in the Seattle suburbs. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area but have lived in Washington since 2008. On this site, I track what I read and watch, write commentary on things that interest me, and collect reference information. My professional background is in ecology and…

What’s Tracy up to lately? Updated 25 June 2024 Designing a couple interpretive signs about salmon Creating educational materials for a city business pollution prevention program Posting thoughts and saving bookmarks here — I love having this site 🤓 Editing a sci-fi novel 📝 I’m planning to self-publish Reading lots — I’m digging novellas lately…

I have too many pages to fit in my nav! Here’s a sitemap of all the pages on this website. Blog Mind Garden Index Links to blog about Big Questions Big Questions Balanced Lifestyle Effective Creative Processes Writing Fiction Thinking Better Information Diet Future of the Internet Resisting Fascism Building Community Transforming Capitalism Collections Cool…

Spring is here — it was a big wildlife week in the neighborhood! Heard coyotes howling in the greenbelt and the frogs started their evening chorus, saw a doe in the backyard and a hummingbird out front, and spotted the first bees cruising. But, allergies also hit me hard 🤧

I downloaded my Google Takeout data. I’d forgotten they own Blogger and was delighted to discover they had atom feeds for all of my old college blogs! No photos, but still funny to see what I wrote about twenty years ago. I’ve marked the date of my very first post on my calendar so I can celebrate the anniversary come September 😁🥂
I’ve been working on keeping fewer tabs open on my phone. I was doing pretty well till yesterday but left six tabs open overnight 😂
Stuff I Did:

About eight hours of consulting work
Developed a new revision plan for my novel
Started exploring webfonts for my consulting website
Went to Homebrew Website Club
Watched a webinar about home design
Walked with a friend twice
Baked scones
One appointment

Reading:

Read Alien Mercenary’s Destiny by Mina Carter and re-read The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan
Started reading Effortless by Greg McKeown
DNF’d Breath of Life by Jocelynn Drake and Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Added five books to my TBR

Words I looked up / concepts I learned:

cognate
caliginous
No free lunch theorem

New newsletter I’m trying out:

Ann Friedman’s newsletter

Pretty things I saw:

Ryan Swierczek of Swierczek Design Co — I like the color palettes, especially the photo tints, and the photo collages on their posters
Roland Kraemer on ThatBloom.com — lots of neat abstract natural photo series, and I thought the inverted cursor overlay was cool looking (although the size changing was a little confusing)
Parag Sahasrabudhe on parag.micro.blog — a series of colorful doors in Puerto Rico

Website Changes:
New organizing section!
I created a new section called “Big Questions” which organizes a lot of my notes and reading under broad questions that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past couple years:

Balanced Lifestyle
Effective Creative Processes
Writing Fictionthis one hasn’t been populated yet
Thinking Better
Information Diet
Future of the Internet
Resisting Fascism
Building Community

I got some good ideas at Homebrew Website Club that I’ve only started implementing on the ‘balanced lifestyle’ page, so these still have some work to do. I also need to figure out what system I’m going to follow to update them since it’s all manual 😉
New page
I also finally published a page collecting “neat websites” as an addition to my pages for interesting people and cool artists and blogroll. I’d been sitting on it, feeling like it needed more content before I could post it, but whatev, may as well post now and can keep adding 🤷‍♀️