Picturing the Humanity and Dread of the Infinite Scroll | The New Yorker

Tabitha Soren’s “Surface Tension” defamiliarizes the touch screen, where our warm animal bodies collide with the machine’s cold and boundless knowledge of the world.

Save this story Save this story A few days ago, I picked up my phone and, in the course of about a minute, looked at a photo of my fat-cheeked baby giggling in a wading pool, a closeup shot of a fan-tailed songbird, a video of hundreds of desperate people waiting for a disappearing chance to exit a nightmare, a paragraph in a news story about a mother of five who died in a flood, a digital rendering of a blue sunset on a planet near the edge of our solar system, a video of a bikini-clad influencer begging her followers to save the coral reef, a text from a friend who was mad at herself for sta

related reading

• Frank Chimero · What Screens Wantfrankchimero.com
• Home is where the bits flowjosephg.com
• Touch and See? Regarding Images in the Era of the Interfacejournals.openedition.org
• Frank Chimero · The Good Roomfrankchimero.com
• Our interfaces have lost their senseswattenberger.com
• Tech-vexed: how digital life threatens our capacity for aweaeon.co
• This life gives you nothingblackbirdspyplane.com
• The Object I'm Holding Is Not a Phonerecordsofthought.com
• the hunger to be everything.substack.com
• Your phone is why you don't feel sexycatherineshannon.substack.com
• Screen Memories — Real Lifereallifemag.com
• There’s an Alternative to the Infinite Scroll | WIREDwired.com