justin-searls-co-bifdrg.txt (28083B)
1 [1] 2 justin․searls․co 3 [2][ ] 4 [3]Posts [4]Casts [5]Links [6]Shots [7]Takes [8]Tubes [9]Clips [10]Spots [11] 5 Slops [12]Mails 6 [13]About [14]Search [15] Subscribe 7 [16]Posts [17]Casts [18]Links [19]Shots [20]Takes [21]Tubes [22]Clips [23]Spots 8 [24]Slops [25]Mails 9 [26]About [27]Search [28] Subscribe 10 11 • [29]Work 12 • [30]GitHub 13 • [31]YouTube 14 • [32]LinkedIn 15 • [33]Instagram 16 • [34]Mastodon 17 • [35]Twitter 18 19 What follows is an issue of [36]my newsletter, Searls of Wisdom, recreated for 20 you here in website form. For the full experience, subscribe and get it 21 delivered to your inbox each month! 22 [37][ ] [38][Sign up] 23 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 24 Monday, May 19, 2025 [39] 25 26 Searls of Wisdom for April 2025 27 28 Remember April? April was a month in a long line of months that left me (and, 29 one presumes, a lot of people) asking themselves, "how did we end up here?" 30 Well, that's what you have this weird newsletter for. And we'll get to that, I 31 promise. 32 33 In terms of stuff I did since last time we chatted: 34 35 • Cut a couple ([40]1, [41]2) good Breaking Change episodes. The content is 36 questionable, but the audio quality has never been better 37 • Summarized what I consider to be the [42]easiest-to-assess traits of strong 38 programmers 39 • Started using [43]GitHub Copilot in Agent mode, and recorded my [44]vibe 40 code deflowering live on YouTube 41 • [45]Made Reddit angry by using a computer to [46]generate background images 42 for my house's rooms in HomeKit 43 44 I also started a vlog. Right now it just lives in this album in my Photos 45 library, but initial reviews are unanimously positive! 46 47 I started a vlog 48 49 As I start writing this, I'm sitting on an A350 bound for Tokyo, and the flight 50 attendant just announced we won't have WiFi over the Pacific, because Viasat or 51 whoever hasn't launched their latest satellite yet. As a writer and programmer 52 whose greatest impediment to creative output is the risk of distracting myself 53 on the Internet, learning that I would be forced offline for 13 hours triggered 54 a familiar relief. My body softened. Maybe I'll actually get some sleep. If I 55 play my cards right, I might manage to write one whole e-mail between now and 56 when I land. [Update, 19 days later: I did not.] In any case, being kicked off 57 the 'Net for a few hours once in a while can be restorative. 58 59 In fact, as luck would have it, one answer to the question posed at the outset 60 ("how did we end up here?") is also, more or less, "because Internet." So 61 today, let's talk a bit about the World Wide Web and how tangled in it we've 62 become. 63 64 In a world experiencing an unprecedented degree of economic volatility, 65 fifty-fifty ideological polarization, and routine technological upheaval, 66 there's at least one trend line moving in a clear and consistent direction: 67 [47]people [48]across [49]the [50]world [51]increasingly [52]agree [53]things 68 [54]are [55]bad [56]and [57]getting [58]worse. 69 70 Why is this? And if everyone feels that way, why does the prospect of 71 leveraging that unanimous sentiment into effecting positive change feel more 72 hopeless than ever? How can it be that living standards have never been higher 73 and public sentiment has never been lower? 74 75 The answer eludes us because it is the water we swim in. Or, rather, the [59] 76 Information Superhighway we ride on. 77 78 People are so accustomed to today's global and instantaneous exchange of 79 information that we seem to suffer a collective amnesia as to how recent an 80 innovation it is. One reason it's sneaked up on us is that information is 81 inherently invisible, so the most successful information technologies penetrate 82 our minds with minimal disturbance to our environment. In fact, the world 83 mostly looks the same as it did forty years ago. And while it would make for 84 rather dull cinema to consider that Marty McFly could totally get by wearing 85 his 1985 wardrobe in 2025, at least he wouldn't have to worry about whether his 86 hoverboard would work over water. We may not have gotten the flying cars we 87 were promised, but at least we can hang our hats on how much friction we've 88 eliminated from payment processing. 89 90 [60]An elder millennial's history of the Information Age 91 92 Every year or so, I find it clarifying to take a few moments to reflect and 93 look back at the progression of the Information Age over my lifetime. We've 94 come a long way: 95 96 • Forty years ago, my parents had a black-and-white television connected via 97 coax to an antenna mounted on our house's roof. I have dim memories of 98 nightly news broadcasts glowing through the curved glass of Dad's 99 then-massive 30" CRT television; the static causing the anchor to dance and 100 flicker like a flame. We got an hour of news each night from any of three 101 sources (well, four, since we were within range of Canada's CBC over VHF), 102 and each covered the same mostly local, mostly mundane topics in a format 103 that was mediated by longstanding journalistic norms 104 • Thirty years ago, they upgraded to a color TV and basic cable service, 105 which brought with it access to CNN. The news now came to us 24/7. Its 106 coverage was national rather than local—blanketing dozens of media markets 107 would have been cost-prohibitive—and this surely accelerated the 108 nationalization of partisan politics. But CNN's novel format was dull and 109 unfocused as producers struggled to figure out how to fill so much airtime. 110 My family also had a 14.4 kbps dial-up modem and an America On-Line 111 subscription that charged us by the minute—neither of which posed a 112 problem, as there was so little to do on the World Wide Web. Still, for the 113 first time, we could reach out and retrieve information on demand, even if 114 it was limited to outdated and uninteresting marketing fluff hidden behind 115 [61]AOL Keywords 116 • Twenty years ago, our Comcast service was upgraded to include broadband 117 Internet. Publications now had real websites and computers had real 118 browsers. When news was breaking, I'd visit my favorite bookmarks and 119 repeatedly mash F5 to receive updates. Information could finally travel 120 instantly across the globe, but distribution depended on the initiative of 121 individual users to search and surf for it. A smattering of self-hosted 122 weblogs emerged as noteworthy upstarts, but media as actual people 123 experienced it remained unchanged—monolithic outlets mediated news coverage 124 at the whims of enterprising editors and eccentric billionaires, just as it 125 always had 126 • Ten years ago, we were all glued to our phones. Incredible as ubiquitous 127 wireless connectivity was, the chief innovation of the era was the 128 disintermediation of information. Legacy outlets that tossed newspapers 129 onto doorsteps were quickly outflanked by social media apps that pushed 130 notifications onto home screens. Whether you were pulling-to-refresh 131 Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, the contours of our new information 132 ecosystem began to take shape: an endless firehose of "content" from 133 billions of voices. Before long, a handful of platforms achieved so-called 134 "network effect" and injected themselves as the new mediator class, 135 personalizing each of our feeds by cherry-picking content so as to maximize 136 our engagement and their advertising revenue 137 • As for today, we are witnessing the apex of the previous era and the dawn 138 of the next. With each generation of mobile connectivity, we've invented 139 new ways to saturate every available megabit of bandwidth and every spare 140 moment of attention. Most people spend multiple hours each day lost in an 141 infinite scroll of vertical video. Textual thoughtleaders have given way to 142 video influencers. Active curation has succumbed to passive consumption. If 143 the 2010s represented an eruption of hot takes being spewed across 144 ideological lines, the magma has cooled throughout the 2020s as users have 145 been sorted into like-minded pools of lackadaisical discontent. For most 146 people, "news" no longer exists—people simply hear things. Who they hear 147 from and about what is selected by an algorithm designed to provoke 148 newly-invented emotional reactions that the market greatly values: 149 unfulfillment so as to scroll past more ads, uninhibition so as to make 150 more purchases, unsatisfaction so as to keep coming back. By now, most of 151 us have long since traded away our capacity for emotional regulation in 152 exchange for the promise we'll never experience boredom again 153 • And what of tomorrow? One can only imagine what fresh hell they have in 154 store for us. Will human creators be replaced by celebrity avatars? Will 155 targeted display ads give rise to individualized video trailers starring 156 you in a film about how an irrational mid-life car purchase will make an 157 idealized version of your high school crush want to sleep with you? And who 158 needs an imaginary friend when your kid could grow up with an omnipresent 159 AI companion to shape their cognitive and social development—while also 160 subtly influencing which brand of chips they'll buy? I'm honestly hopeful 161 the answer is yes! (If only because such a future indicates we still have a 162 functioning economy with access to fresh water…) 163 164 The timeline above might feel truthy to you. Maybe it maps to your experience 165 as well. And forgive me if this all reads as obvious—you've probably also 166 looked back from time to time and considered the dizzying pace at which the 167 world has changed. Growing up, progress was defined by more access to more 168 perspectives delivered in less time and less money. But now, with the benefit 169 of hindsight, it's starting to feel that information itself has been 170 transformed as well: more personal and more engaging, but ultimately less 171 actionable and less satisfying. 172 173 [62]We don't love to win, we hate to lose 174 175 A line from [63]Interstellar acts as its thesis, cohering a narrative that 176 extends light years and spans generations. Perhaps appropriately, it takes an 177 AI to tell the human characters this: 178 179 Newton’s Third Law. The only way humans have figured out how to move 180 forward is to leave something behind. 181 182 Humans are generally very sensitive to loss, and the psychological phenomenon 183 known as "[64]loss aversion" describes a powerful force motivating people to 184 stand athwart history and moderate the pace of change. We know it best for all 185 the ways it leads humans to make irrational, unwise decisions (staying in a bad 186 job too long, holding onto your worthless NFTs, refusing to cancel Netflix), 187 but the reason loss aversion exists to begin with is that in nature there are 188 countless more ways in which avoiding loss is adaptive behavior. I'm sure some 189 ancestor of mine hundreds of thousands of years ago only survived because they 190 refused to let go of a banana… loss aversion isn't all bad. 191 192 Anyway, loss aversion is why attempts to take away the Internet as we 193 experience it today—as we saw earlier this year with TikTok and as I witnessed 194 again on this plane—cause people to get upset. In January, the Internet was 195 pounded with videos of 20-somethings half-jokingly [65]swearing fealty to the 196 CCP to advocate for their favorite app. On today's flight, a finance bro threw 197 a tantrum demanding outsized compensation for missing a full day of trading as 198 he pointed to his ticket, which erroneously labeled the plane as being 199 "WiFi-equipped." 200 201 We can all relate to how it feels to have something we find precious taken away 202 from us, like bananas or TikTok or WiFi. We are less attuned to, but still 203 plenty capable of lashing out over, intangible potential loss—as we've seen in 204 the debate over [66]net neutrality or the spectre of [67]ISP data caps. But 205 when it comes to this particular discussion where the sort of philosophical 206 loss being described can only be conveyed through a careful comparative 207 analysis over a period of decades? We're cooked. 208 209 We all might harbor nostalgia for the way things were, but loss aversion can't 210 help us reclaim such distant past. Any attempt to actually go back would itself 211 be perceived as an unacceptable loss. Like it or not, humans are now a race of 212 TikTokers—at least until some new thing outdoes TikTok in a manner that people 213 like you and me will only read as depraved but in which the rest of the world 214 will view as incremental progress. 215 216 [68]What exactly was lost? 217 218 Even people clamoring for a return to the pre-Internet glory days of Real 219 Journalism wouldn't actually be willing to trade in their smartphones for one 220 measly hour of nightly news from a handful of national broadcasters. In 221 general, it's easier to wholesale vilify a new technology (video games! 222 smartphones! TikTok!) than to drill into its unintended consequences while 223 simultaneously acknowledging its merits. So instead of buying a dumbphone and 224 moving to a cabin in the woods in the vain hope that it will transport me back 225 to the 90s, it seems more useful to sit and have a think about the positive 226 attributes of the long-dead media ecosystem and consider what it might look 227 like to reclaim those benefits in a modern context. 228 229 On reflection, I can think of two important benefits of the highly-constrained 230 media environment of the pre-Internet era that almost sound quaint by today's 231 standards: 232 233 First, it turns out that a scarcity of sources—not speed or accuracy of 234 reporting—is what gave news media its authority in society. For the most part, 235 people walked around with a shared understanding of the world they occupied, 236 accepted a broad base of agreed-upon facts, and associated the oppositional 237 "other" as belonging to distinct, geographically-defined media ecosystems. 238 Americans largely believed their neighbors were good people, didn't doubt the 239 safety of fluoridated water, and mostly imagined their enemies as people living 240 in countries that didn't air Murrow or Cronkite. This situation resulted in all 241 kinds of terrible outcomes for people whose interests fell outside the narrow 242 range of that day's [69]Overton window, but it did foster a sense that "we" 243 were on the same "team" operated by a common government that would from time to 244 time "do things." It's hard to imagine a single country for which that 245 sentiment still rings true today. Fringe ideas that would have been banished to 246 stuffed-and-mailed-from-home newsletters with fewer than fifty subscribers in 247 the 1970s now form a latticework of overlapping constituencies necessary to 248 winning any level of elected office in the United States. 249 250 Second, it sure feels like the scarcity of scope of available information had a 251 tendency to focus society on a tractable set of clearly-defined problems. When 252 engaged voters in Detroit subscribed to one of its two regional papers, the 253 number of topics under debate was constrained by how many column-inches would 254 fit in the "A" section of either. As a result, it was actually possible to keep 255 abreast of "the issues" (arbitrary as they might be) throughout an election, 256 form comprehensible opinions, and support candidates based on their positions. 257 This reality began dissolving with the advent of social networks and new media, 258 before disappearing entirely once algorithms started drawing from that well to 259 populate everyone's feeds. Today, we doom-scroll timelines that are customized 260 to our unique desires and anxieties, effectively corralling each of us into a 261 community of one. The thought of plopping a half-dozen random voters into a 262 focus group with the expectation their policy priorities would circumscribe a 263 preordained set of traditional issues simply beggars belief. (The political 264 press tends to confuse this phenomenon with polarization, but it's actually 265 worse: polarized disagreement presupposes agreement on what people disagree 266 about.) Hell, pluck any two people for whom a pollster would rate as 267 "highly-engaged" and—forget about reading the same paper—they probably wouldn't 268 have even heard of each other's self-reported #1 issue. 269 270 So, what did we lose by gaining infinitely-connected networking technology? We 271 lost a shared sense of the world we collectively inhabit, as well as the most 272 pressing issues facing it. As a result, it's no wonder that people from 273 seemingly every developed country believe things are going to hell: modern 274 information distribution organizes around ideological borders as opposed to 275 geographic ones and is scientifically engineered to engender 276 emotionally-charged, high-stakes attachment to any of a thousand disparate 277 animating issues. 278 279 So that's neat. 280 281 [70]Maybe this is coming to a head 282 283 Intellectuals like you and I who can still be bothered to read and write text 284 in excess of a thousand words have, in recent years, started to detect that 285 something is amiss here. I, for one, have been worried about this shit since 286 well before it was cool. The approaching endgame started to materialize with 287 Facebook's [71]introduction of the News Feed in 2006 and began to feel 288 locked-in with the Internet's collective [72]pivot to video in 2015. These 289 moments stand out as milestones in both of two parallel timelines that have 290 played out with approximately zero awareness of or interaction with one another 291 (until recently): 292 293 1. The educated, book-reading class has tackled the changing information 294 landscape with the same journalistic detachment as it would any other 295 "social epidemic," like second-hand smoke or teen pregnancy. Its movement 296 can be charted by a familiar progression of the sort of sleeper-hit 297 nonfiction books we see written in response to any such societal issue: 298 from [73]identifying the problem to [74]exhorting individual resistance to 299 [75]offering parenting advice to [76]bargaining with the changing world 300 before eventually [77]pathologizing its effect on children. This culminated 301 in a variety of tech-skeptical [78]policy prescriptions, [79]antitrust 302 suits, and [80]saber rattling by the Biden administration 303 304 2. While journalists merely adopted the dark, the alt-right was born in it, 305 molded by it. As early as 2005, I remember memes originating on [81]4chan 306 and later showing up on [82]GAF before landing on [83]IGN and ultimately 307 being deposited as sediment in the collective male gamer id. Sometimes the 308 meme pipeline was harmless, like when [84]"Rickrolling" emerged from 309 4chan's duckroll trend in 2006, but it was just as often horrifying. I ran 310 into Brianna Wu several times the year [85]Gamergate broke out, and I 311 genuinely struggled to reckon with the real-world consequences she suffered 312 at the hands of a few basement-dwelling edgelords. 4chan's notoriety peaked 313 when it birthed [86]QAnon, but one can draw a straight line from the image 314 board to any of the [87]men's rights movement, cesspool of [88]pick-up 315 artists, or phenomenon of [89]incel mass shooters. By 2024, dank meme 316 laundering had taken many of these deplorable positions mainstream, and a 317 male-coded political constituency ("the [90]Manosphere") emerged around 318 [91]Barstool Sports and [92]Joe Rogan, espousing a masculine [93] 319 primitivism skeptical of effete knowledge work 320 321 Both tracks have seen phenomenal success in their own way. 322 323 The poindexter liberals in their ivory towers of intellectualism wrote a bunch 324 of books about how smartphones are bad and as soon as it became about "the 325 children", they inadvertently turned the Christian right against the same 326 technology that had radicalized them in the first place. The streams are really 327 crossing now that Republican states are climbing over each other to [94]ban 328 [95]phones [96]in [97]schools and [98]social [99]media [100]accounts for 329 minors. 330 331 Meanwhile, a handful of hentai-hoarding incels on 4chan spewing memes and 332 conspiracy theories wound up getting to choose the Vice President with J.D. 333 "maybe the Internet was a mistake" Vance. The lines are again blurring as 334 ambitious Democrats like [101]Pete Buttigieg and [102]Josh Shapiro court The 335 Male Vote by showing up on right-leaning podcasts men apparently listen to. And 336 whether it's evidence of [103]horseshoe theory or a sign of a broader belief 337 that technology companies are fucking up our civilization, MAGA diehards like 338 Matt Gaetz [104]have found common cause with liberal firebrands like Lina Khan 339 in support of breaking up the likes of Google, Meta, and Amazon. 340 341 Planet Earth is undeniably a bit of a shitshow at the moment, but I'm actually 342 feeling optimistic that we're approaching the precipice of something that 343 will—once we get to the other side of it—feel like the beginning of a sea 344 change in how information is organized, constituted, and distributed. To wit: 345 skepticism of information technology has materialized and matured from opposite 346 ends of the political spectrum, and advocates from both sides are meeting in 347 the middle with relatively boring policy prescriptions like regulating the use 348 of smartphones in schools and expanding the scope of antitrust actions. Seems… 349 fine, actually? 350 351 I don't expect any of the solutions being proposed today to, you know, work. 352 But it definitely feels like we've hit a critical mass such that the changes we 353 see in information technology during the next decade will look markedly 354 distinct from the last four. 🤞 355 356 © 2025 Justin Searls. All rights reserved. 357 358 359 References: 360 361 [1] https://justin.searls.co/ 362 [3] https://justin.searls.co/posts/ 363 [4] https://justin.searls.co/casts/ 364 [5] https://justin.searls.co/links/ 365 [6] https://justin.searls.co/shots/ 366 [7] https://justin.searls.co/takes/ 367 [8] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/ 368 [9] https://justin.searls.co/clips/ 369 [10] https://justin.searls.co/spots/ 370 [11] https://justin.searls.co/slops/ 371 [12] https://justin.searls.co/mails/ 372 [13] https://justin.searls.co/about/ 373 [14] https://justin.searls.co/search/ 374 [15] https://justin.searls.co/subscribe/ 375 [16] https://justin.searls.co/posts/ 376 [17] https://justin.searls.co/casts/ 377 [18] https://justin.searls.co/links/ 378 [19] https://justin.searls.co/shots/ 379 [20] https://justin.searls.co/takes/ 380 [21] https://justin.searls.co/tubes/ 381 [22] https://justin.searls.co/clips/ 382 [23] https://justin.searls.co/spots/ 383 [24] https://justin.searls.co/slops/ 384 [25] 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[92] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Rogan 450 [93] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitivism 451 [94] https://generationfaraday.com/2025/03/17/indiana-takes-action-to-curb-cell-phone-distractions-in-classrooms/ 452 [95] https://thecapitolist.com/senate-bill-proposes-phone-free-school-pilot-to-assess-academic-behavioral-impact/ 453 [96] https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4863487-south-carolina-school-cell-phone-ban/ 454 [97] https://www.katc.com/vermilion-parish/louisiana-bans-cell-phones-in-schools-parents-and-school-official-weigh-in 455 [98] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/30/texas-social-media-ban-warning-label/ 456 [99] https://apnews.com/article/florida-social-media-ban-desantis-fd07f61e167bd9109a83cd7355b5f164 457 [100] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/23/utah-social-media-access-law-minors 458 [101] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgx7GvYSq64 459 [102] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKu58ue-i1c 460 [103] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory 461 [104] https://www.fastcompany.com/91229051/matt-gaetz-trump-attorney-general-pick-lina-kahn-big-tech