The non-algorithmic Internet
I listened to Cal Newport’s podcast the other day. His producer, Jessie, and he discussed "the algorithm," which encourages us to use sites whose sole purpose is to keep us spending as much time as possible.
The biggest problem is algorithm-based social media. Its purpose is to narrow our chain of thought, show us content from people who say what we like to hear, and indoctrinate us more and more, making us waste time looking at ads.
Nothing more, nothing less.
What to do? The answer is to spend time curating your resources, read what interesting people have to say, listen to good music, listen to podcasts that interest you, and interact with the personal and interesting web.
Along the same lines, Dan Sinker argues that we should not lean into mediocre AI-generated content in his well-researched and thoughtful article The Who Cares Era.
In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.
That resonates with me, if the art of creating and thinking lessens to write a prompt asking an AI to summarize the most common thoughts about a subject, we will struggle to invent new ideas and think creative thoughts.
AI can help us, but thinking and originality are not criteria we can put on these large language models. They are a large set of data, consisting of texts and ideas that other people have already thought of, and are unable to think.
Dan concludes that as "the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things". And continues, "Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book".
For me, that was purchasing and reading the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design, written by Josef Müller-Brockmann, last week. For me, this book made me rethink a way of creating grids in CSS, which I can use in my profession, and induced creativity that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
I understand that a book about grid systems from 1981 may not be something for everyone, but find your own subject and delve into it.
The Internet can be a lovely place, made by humans for other humans.