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Bryan Lehrer

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By New Internet, I'm referring to the reformist and reactionary technology movements that began to bubble up in the early 2010s and could be unmistakably felt over the last five. I'm talking about the pushback by various groups of actors against social media, tech monopolies, platform capitalism, and the attention economy; the counter proposal of an indie web, a decentralized web, a Peer-to-Peer web, a permissionless web, even erasing the web entirely. Of course I am also pointing towards the whole monolith that is crypto. On an even more diffuse level, I'm thinking of the cultural backlash against 'tech bros' and startup culture; the call by many for slow, open, and humane technology. I'm thinking of the people who likened computers to gardens. To be clear, these things were never one thing. They were fractured and messily interconnected from the jump. But insofar as the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even cryptobros and humane technologists stood on common (not necessarily firm) gro

Bryan Lehrer Bryan Lehrer Entries About Email Twitter Subscribe What Happened to the New Internet? 2023-11-08 Lately, I've been asking myself a question – what happened to the New Internet? By New Internet, I'm referring to the reformist and reactionary technology movements that began to bubble up in the early 2010s and could be unmistakably felt over the last five. I'm talking about the pushback by various groups of actors against social media, tech monopolies, platform capitalism, and the attention economy; the counter proposal of an indie web, a decentralized web, a Peer-to-Peer web, a perm

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