The evolution of software development over the past decade has been very frustrating. Little of it seems to makes sense, even to those of us who are right in the middle of it.

Specifically, the bulk of existing research can be separated into three specific domains, examining how the internet is affecting: a) attention (i.e., how the constant influx of online information, prompts and notifications competing for our attention may encourage individuals to displace their concentration across multiple incoming media streams – and the consequences this may have for attentional‐switching versus sustained‐attention tasks); b) memory and knowledge (i.e., the extent to which we rely on the Internet as our primary informational resource, and how unique properties of online information access may affect how we process new memories and value our internal knowledge); c) social cognition (along with the personal and societal consequences of increasingly embedding our social networks, interactions, and status within the online world).

Rebel against The Algorithm. Get a library card.

trying to define a movement

This is probably a failing on my part. A person can always “just say no” to social media when they have to get work done, but these things are so seductive and needed and they’re only a click away that they grab hold of you. You go to check Facebook for just five minutes and before you know it an hour has gone by. You realize that you’ve tweeted more words that day than you’ve written. I have to plug my stuff! I have to retweet this! I have to comment on this post so people know my opinions! I have to congratulate this person on their promotion/birth/great post! Let’s get into an argument in bursts of 140 characters, that’s a great use of our time! Let’s take a tweet out of context and freak out about it! I think I’ll retweet this insult someone tweeted me! I have to make sure I don’t miss anything! I have to plug my stuff again! Ooo, maybe this celebrity will interact with me! I need to take this quiz to find out what kind of doughnut I am! Here’s video of a cat dancing! I have to RT this praise someone gave me! Hey, look, 9 ways you’re eating salad wrong! What’s happening now? How about now?

One of those little-regarded sections of CDA 230 is part (c)(2)(b), which broadly immunizes anyone who makes a tool that helps internet users block content they don't want to see. Enter the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and their client, Ethan Zuckerman, an internet pioneer turned academic at U Mass Amherst. Knight has filed a lawsuit on Zuckerman's behalf, seeking assurance that Zuckerman (and others) can use browser automation tools to block, unfollow, and otherwise modify the feeds Facebook delivers to its users

The very best thing to keep the web partly alive is to maintain some content yourself - start a blog, join a forum and contribute to the conversation, even podcast if that is your thing. But that takes a lot of time and not everyone has the energy or the knowhow to create like this. The second best thing to do is to show your support for pages you enjoy by being nice and making a slight effort.

For years, internet advocates have warned against restrictive policies by governments like those in China and Russia aimed at limiting access to specific content online. They said initiatives like the Great Firewall risked ushering in an internet that was increasingly balkanized into different spheres where users will have very different experiences of the web based on where they are. The “splinternet,” as some call it, was to be avoided at all costs, but maybe it’s time to reconsider that stance; maybe it’s time to embrace it.

You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you saw in the window. When you download a second app the prices are different again. You ring the restaurant directly and it says the number is no longer in service.

How do you explain starting a blog in 2023? What possible excuse can there be, on an internet whose only real rule is to never look backward, to hitch your wagon to a 20 year old discarded format? Well, in the words of the kids who are gleefully strip-mining 20 year old culture for music and clothing fashions, blogging was… a vibe.