Ali Alkhatib: Digital Forests

I’ve been reading about trees and forestry lately, and something about this story James Scott tells in his book Seeing Like a State has me thinking a lot about online advertising (and, more generally, the design of sociotechnical systems). It’s a story about the exploitation of a complex resource and the delayed, but ultimately devastating, toll that this exploitation took. But more substantively it’s about the reductive functions we use to make sense of the world, and how those functions become dangerous when we let them run our lives.

I’ve been reading about trees and forestry lately, and something about this story James Scott tells in his book Seeing Like a State has me thinking a lot about online advertising (and, more generally, the design of sociotechnical systems). It’s a story about the exploitation of a complex resource and the delayed, but ultimately devastating, toll that this exploitation took. But more substantively it’s about the reductive functions we use to make sense of the world, and how those functions become dangerous when we let them run our lives. At the turn of the 18th century, people in Europe were de

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related reading

• A Big Little Idea Called Legibility — Ribbonfarmribbonfarm.com
• Against the dark forestwrecka.ge
• The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet | by Yancey Strickler | OneZeroonezero.medium.com
• The internet is already over - by Sam Krisssamkriss.substack.com
• Frank Chimero · What Screens Wantfrankchimero.com
• A Website To End All Websites | Henry From Onlinehenry.codes
• The dark forest theory of the internetystrickler.com
• Seeing like a Statejzhao.xyz
• We Need To Rewild The Internetnoemamag.com
• Frank Chimero · The Good Roomfrankchimero.com
• The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral – Hapgoodhapgood.us
• Frank Chimero · The Web’s Grainfrankchimero.com