Where I Find Links
Justin Hall, Melanie Hoff, and Are.na.
Dear reader,
I’m happy I asked you to send questions. It led to conversations with readers I had never heard from before. It feels good when you become a name rather than a digit and when I learn about what interests you. It is closer to how I want the Internet to be: personal, communal, curious.
Mitchell asked: »Where do you find all this stuff?«
When I started Naive Weekly, I thought discovery was the most important thing to solve for people to go outside of the centralized platform walls. That’s why I made Wilderness.land, a Pokémon-inspired spreadsheet map with hundreds of hidden links. Or URL Poetry Club, an attempt at writing poems using only domain names. The idea was to create portals that would take people somewhere new.
Lately, I’ve been less interested in these web-discovery projects. Maybe we don’t need more libraries but more people who go to libraries—or zine fairs, independent bookstores, conventions, etc. In other words, maybe we need fewer websites randomly taking you to another website but more people seeking what inspires them. Spencer Chang and I wrote a guide to getting started with your own Internet walks, focusing less on the destination and more on the journey. I’d love to hear if this is useful.
But to answer the question more directly: I don’t have a single source where I find all the links. It’s a messy combination of newsletters, social feeds, searching, chat groups, conversations, and people sending stuff. It’s also organically evolving. As I continue sending Naive Weekly and working on Internet projects, my sources become more substantial, reliable, and surprising. In the beginning, it was hard to find enough links I liked. Now, to keep the newsletter shorter rather than comprehensive and to make it lightweight for you and your inbox, there are many excellent links I don't include. I believe this is a common experience: what you devote your attention to multiplies.
I’ll still provide one recommendation: Are.na. Essentially, it is a social bookmarking tool. It took me years to get used to, but now Are.na is my most beloved website. What makes Are.na perfect for discovery is that whatever you bookmark must be added to a specific channel. It’s not possible to post into the ether like on social media. On Are.na, you must define where your bookmark, called block, belongs. This subtle decision has rippling effects. Suddenly, you don’t follow people as you do on social media, but you follow their curiosities. This makes a much richer and sprawling environment to explore. For websites, some of my favourite channels to find links are Polina’s love at first site, Rozina’s my internet, and Elliott’s Model Sites.
I understand if Are.na is not working for everyone. In that case, I recommend you find another social bookmarking tool that matches your taste because it’s such a refreshing way to find, share, and collect links. Instead of feeding you content, it stimulates and expands your curiosity. For example, try Sublime or Pinboard.
Over the next weeks, I’ll share more answers. If you keep sending questions to kristoffer@naiveweekly.com this might extend for some time and could become a new tradition.
With care,
Kristoffer
Wayside flowers
https://wall-of-sounds.glitch.me/
Field notes
1.
Short and sweet: A website is a performance.
2.
»I look at the net as a neighborhood. I want to live in a neighborhood with funky houses, neighbors who greet me on the street and have something to say. Not amidst office sky-disgracers, plastered with useless billboards and littered with forgotten glossy flyers. I want my house to have a warm glow, like people really live there. I have given my online space a human feel with honest and revealing material, publishing even the painful parts, because cyberspace will only be funky if it reflects our joys and sorrows. Anything else is sanitized, alienating and just not any fun at all.«
— Justin Hall in Computopia (1995)
3.
What if technology was created by people who love us? A student report from Melanie Hoff’s Digital Love Languages course. Folder poetry, website gifts, and consensual hacking were some of the classes taught during the course at the School for Poetic Computation
4.
From the Poetic Web Calendar: Self-model-making (online, 25/2), The Internet is… so let’s read books about the internet (Berlin, 25/2), Screenwalks with Michael Berto (online, 26/2), and Choose Your Filter (Karlsruhe, ongoing).
5.
Calls for Participation: Malmö Residency is open for applications (27/2), Permeable Barrier is open for submission (Due 28/2), The Wrong Biennale is open for proposals (28/2), Words of Mouth is open for pitches (1/3), NEW INC is open for applications (3/3), Blackbird is looking for AUS/NZ aged 18-25 (5/3), Onassis AiR is open for applications (7/3), Spam Zine is open for submissions (Due 12/3), Whole Earth Redux is accepting pitches (14/3), Robida is open for submissions (31/3), Shed of the year (31/3), and Ensemble Park is open for submissions (Due 2/4).
Collections
Last email was sent to 4022 inboxes. Logo by Dreamsâ„¢. Photograph by Ana Å antl. And you can reach me at kristoffer@naiveweekly.com.