Forget Me Not
Forget Me Not
Is It About Life, The Internet, Or What We Have Lost?
Another Sunday, Another Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
It is a lazy afternoon. We are near the lakeside of Chicago. It is early October and the couple is enjoying a picnic. We observe the couple from above. The camera steadies as a polaroid looking frame appears on the screen. We begin with a scene one meter wide, seen from just one meter away. Now every ten seconds we look from ten times farther away.
In 1977, Charles and Ray Eames produced Powers of Ten. A short film made for IBM to illustrate the relative size of things in the universe. And the effect of adding a zero. It doesn’t take many seconds before the couple in the park is long gone and the Earth is diminishing into the distance, showing us the power of exponential growth.
For three decades technology startups have forecasted exponential growth curves to attract enormous valuations. Ignoring the constraints of time, space, and regulations, these companies have moved fast to secure their positive network effects and become the winner who took it all.
In this period venture capital has emerged as an industry. Betting on ten companies, venture capitalists hope one evolves into a unicorn. The mythical creature that used to belong to fiction, but today is spotted regularly in Silicon Valley, where it refers to startup companies valued $1 billion, or more. There are more than 300 of these around the world, most of them loosing money.
The coronavirus has given everyone a primer in exponential growth. Suddenly we all understand what it means when it takes three days for a virus to double its spread. We understand the importance of flatting the curve and the danger of untamed exponential growth.
The internet is built on the powers of exponential growth. Since the 1970s, processing power for computers has doubled every two years. In my youth, I followed this development closely through advertisement magazines from computer stores. Kilobytes became Megabytes, and soon not even Gigabytes would impress me.
Today I no longer know the size of my laptop hard drive. Storage, like the internet, has become something I take for granted. I’m posting photos from my lakeside picnic on Instagram. I’m tweeting what’s on my mind. I swipe to refresh my inbox and ‘love’ your quirky Facebook update.
The exponential nature of the internet is lost on me in my daily life. I wish someone would pull me away from my phone, taking me one meter apart. And then, every ten seconds, move me further away from the endorphin rush of likes, and worries of no replies. Far away. And then even further, until I’d have enough distance to consider what the internet could be if it was not a place for gold diggers chasing the mirage of exponential growth.
Internet Black Hole
Paths I Went Along Until It Was Time For Dinner
Forbes posted a portrait of SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son. Masa, as he is better known, is quite the character. For three days before the dot-com bubble burst, Masa was the world’s richest man. Then he lost 99% of his money. However, Masa returned, largely thanks to an early bet in Alibaba, and today most people might know him from his $100 billion Vision Fund. This will once become a thriller.
77% of the people who are working in jobs highly exposed to coronavirus are women. The average pay for workers in high-risk occupations is below the median weekly wage. These are UK numbers, but I assume it holds for most countries in the world. The virus is bad, but it is especially bad for the already marginalised and working class.
This spring I’ve been practicing becoming more intentional on what I let into my mind. Last week I unfollowed everyone on Twitter, and I’ve since started to organize my lists to make them more useful. I think it is one of the best internet things I’ve done in recent years. If you want a taste of what it feels like without all the hassle, I recommend Gobo. It is a free, open-source tool that helps you control your feed.
Roadside Flowers
Delightful Surprises From The Information Superhighway
The internet is peaking in Russia right now. This Facebook group of people cosplaying famous pieces of art is highly active, with top-notch moderation. Thank you internet!
Claim: there is no better place to find stupid internet ideas than by browsing the projects from Stupid Hackathon. It is a goldmine of quirky internet laughs. I’ve too many favourites to highlight any, so please browse yourself.
Here is Maarten Weyn, a guy who made a map to show his physical location in real-time. If you speak code and own a 3D printer, you might want to copy his code, otherwise, I recommend spending two minutes appreciating the YouTube demo.
We have all watched videos of people who have taken a photo every single day of their lives and compiled them into one timelapse video. We all know that we would never have the discipline to do it. That was until Maya Man made Glance Back, a chrome extension that once a day takes a random photo of you when you open a new tab.
Long time readers know I have a thing for trees. Here is an Instagram account dedicated to Trees Eating Things. Nomnomnom.
If you need a new profile picture, head over to AI-ART.Tokyo where the algorithm named AI Gahaku generates a masterpiece from your photo. Pick between several classic oil-painting styles. AI Gahaku got the size of my nose right.
Wash your hands, keep distance, and don’t touch your face. The last piece of advise I still struggle with. Honestly, I constantly feel like Sara Cody. To the rescue comes DoNotTouchYourFace.com. After a quick setup process, the site will warn you whenever you are touching your face.
This is a YouTube video where the title updates according to how many views it has. My attention was caught by the concept, but honestly, I didn’t expect much from the video itself. Turns out it is a relevant, and enjoyable, video talking about creating projects on the web and the open interfaces that we lost.
Understory
Rich Nutrients For Your Passive Consumption
If you have taste for visually pleasing projects, prepare yourself to lose some time browsing around Atlas of Places. It is a visually driven research collection of Architecture, Cartography, Cinema, Photography, and more.
HTML.Energy is an independent podcast interviewing people handwriting websites. Writing simple websites seems to be a forgotten craft, so it is refreshing to listen to people coding from their hearts, and the interviewees are not your usual suspects.
Naive Weekly
Hi, I’m Kristoffer and you have just read Naive Weekly - Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
Friday evening I got an email notification telling me that Yinka has become a paid subscriber. It still blows my mind every single time this happens. Thank you so much, Yinka.
Last week this newsletter was sent to 545 subscribers. Thirteen people are crazy enough to chip in every month/year to support me making time to write this newsletter: Nikolaj, Antal, Søren, Dries, Mikkel, Tina, Aydo, Lukas, Hans, Csongor, Ida Marie, Yinka & Angela!
Photograph by Ana Santl from Teshima, Japan.
<3
Kristoffer