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
- Book Review: Seeing Like A Stateslatestarcodex.com
- A Big Little Idea Called Legibility — Ribbonfarmribbonfarm.com
- Seeing Like a Statearchive.nytimes.com
- Trees are mostly made of air and a generalizable lesson for AI safety — LessWronglesswrong.com
- A Big Little Idea Called Legibility — Ribbonfarmribbonfarm.com
- Against the dark forestwrecka.ge
- Soulbinding Like a Statesubconscious.substack.com
- The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of timeaaronzlewis.com
- Seeing like a Statejzhao.xyz
- Means and Meaning - Not Boring by Packy McCormicknotboring.co
- ⚡️ Trees Won't Save Usreboothq.substack.com
- How An Algorithm Feels From Inside — LessWronglesswrong.com