The New Internet
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 7.10.25
We are not built for abundance. Wired for survival in times of scarcity, we struggle to overcome our natural inclination to consume as much as possible while we have the chance. A relatively new phenomenon, we have witnessed how abundance in other aspects of our lives has affected our health. While we have developed solutions and education to lead healthy lives in terms of diet, vice, and exercise, we are still in the early stages of understanding how to combat our overconsumption of information.
For the vast majority of human history, we only communicated within our local communities. Most every topic of discussion could be traced to some immediate observable phenomenon, or diverge to apparent speculation of the unknown. As social animals, this was our competitive advantage, driving generations of evolution to strengthen our capacity and desire for consuming and sharing information.
With the advent of global trade, coupled with new methods of transportation, we unlocked the ability to communicate with everyone across the globe, leading to a level of societal-scale coordination that had been impossible for hundreds of thousands of years. The benefits to increased collaboration were reflected in the exponential pace of innovation, yet it still took months for a hastily handwritten letter to make its way across continents.
Upon this infrastructure, we developed our economic models for distributing information. Relevant news was curated by committee, printed in papers, and shipped around the world. The herculean task of architecting distribution at this scale created moats for newspaper publishers to defend their control over the flow of information. From a defensible position, they held power over the price of their subscriptions, availing the revenue necessary to fund the costly work of conducting the journalistic process.
As humanity became increasingly interconnected, and the cost of curation and distribution decreased, competition drove publications to search for new streams of revenue. Recognizing the value of capturing attention, papers discovered significant value in selling their audiences’ attention to advertisers. Despite opening the door for outsiders to bid influence over the information in circulation, the downsides were negligible. News moved slowly, content was focused locally, and corrections were quick to make their rounds. While readers were able to stay informed of current events, their worldviews remained constructed largely from first-hand experience or trusted personal sources.
However, while the negative effects of outside influence and slow-moving misinformation only existed on the margins of society, everything changed as we scaled our means of distribution. With radio and television, it became possible to communicate at near the speed of light. We could beam messages around the world in seconds, but restricted control over our information channels constrained its flow.
Then came the early internet. Suddenly, everyone was capable of creating and sharing information instantaneously. Rumor spread faster than fact as access to limitless data was democratized. Our appetite to consume and share information met no bounds, and we quickly adopted our new methods for global discourse. Yet, our systems for curating and distributing high-quality news were trapped in antiquity, relying on editorial boards to sort through an ever-expanding informational universe. With commercial-scale networks of researchers, analysts, and informants, teams of writers worked extended hours to compile relevant news into easily consumable media.
To compete with the firehose of the social network rumor mill, newsrooms leaned heavily on advertisers, who were now equipped with the ability to ingest an endless stream of sensitive personal information to target every unique reader with the most influential information. Even still, the process didn’t scale, necessitating institutional publications to consolidate while laying off duplicative staff to save costs. Control over the news we rely on to understand our world was centralizing in the hands of the few.
We now form the majority of our beliefs from second-hand information received from strangers online. We hold opinions on every conflict occurring in real-time, and these opinions determine the interpersonal relationships we share with our friends and family. To be clear, our modern information networks have generated unimaginable benefits for humanity. However, the underlying problems with these media systems, which had previously only existed on the margins of localized communities, now impact billions of people on a societal scale.
Control over the pipeline of information, and your attention, carries significant value. It determines the outcome of elections, molds geopolitics, and tips the scales of the global economy. As consumers, we are incapable of filtering signal from noise, left to passively sit in the barrage of information abundance. We have no choice but to rely on curators and algorithms while looking past the obvious manipulation of the content that forms our beliefs.
Fortunately, this is not a reality we have to accept. We have the tools to forge a new information system — one immune from outside influence, with no one in control of the flow of the news we consume. We can live up to the promise of the early internet and truly democratize access to information. We can recapture the ownership of our own attention, form our own beliefs, and wield the liberty to explore new perspectives freely.
We are entering a new information age as the accelerated pace of AI-generated content and social-algorithm-gamification play an expanding role in our digital landscape. Yet, we don’t have to remain on our current trajectory. We can choose to equip ourselves with the tools necessary to eliminate the negative forces that are deteriorating trust in our society and stealing our attention. We can leverage new technology for a better, incentive-aligned internet culture. We can design a new internet.
This week, we highlight writers who are discussing the current state of our digital information environment and how we can begin to build healthier habits for consuming its abundance. We encourage you to explore their work and consider subscribing to them directly!
Scantron’s Newsletter
Written by Scantron, a financial analyst and writer reflecting on sports, finance, and life.
“It is an unfortunate state of the world. Screen time has consumed us. These days, people talk a lot about diet and exercise. People worry about the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, become more attentive to the food that completes their diet, and try to optimize every part of their health by listening to Bryan Johnson or Andrew Huberman. It’s great, but one piece of our health we have forgotten is our information diet.
By information diet, I mean our consumption habits beyond what we put in our bodies. The information we feed our brains.
Today, Americans spend an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes on their phones up, from 4 hours and 37 minutes in 2024. It’s social media, Candy Crush, YouTube, and anything else we may consume. All these platforms come with addictive tactics like infinite scrolling, variable rewards, and algorithmic entrapments. It is the gamification of hijacking our attention. They have vast amounts of data to provide continual, individualized information that consumes us. My Twitter algorithm knows me well. I see George Kittle talking about his training system on a podcast, or the polarizing, clickbait news article that no one can quit. I can’t look away sometimes.”
Trend Mill
Written by Stephen Moore, a writer and editor whose unconventional path from hospitality and shopfitting to tech journalism informs a sharp, skeptical examination of the latest trends in business and technology.
“I was reminiscing the other day with a friend about a long-forgotten period of time — the days when the internet was fun.
Tightknit forums with positive vibes, the early viral videos on YouTube (looking at you, Star Wars Kid), MSN Messenger, the band pages on MySpace, using Limewire to download music (at a glacial speed), searching for information and actually finding it — and actually being able to read it. As I recall, it was pretty magical. I can remember sitting down at night somewhat excited to open my shitty laptop and chat with friends, watch dumb videos and generally have a good time. Sure, it was clunky and slower. But it had charm. And it worked well. It might be a case of rose-tinted glasses, another example of someone claiming it was “better back in my day.”
But, while the internet is still used in much the same way today, something has changed.
I feel no sense of joy using it. No curiosity. No intrigue. No excitement. That feeling of tapping into an endless world of possibilities is gone, replaced with a begrudging realization that I’ll have to enter it again and battle to find what I need, trudging through ads, paywalls, vitriol, disinformation and more.”
the digital meadow
Written by Bea, an observer of culture and media whose essays examine how we think, what we consume, and how we live our modern lives.
“The first thing to recognize is that the Internet radically changed everything. Public intellectuals of the 60s, 70s, and 80s thrived in a media landscape that was relatively limited. Their voices stood out against the noise in a time where there were fewer television networks, newspaper publications, and much less intellectual gatekeeping. Intellectuals debated politics on live television, had their essays printed in reputable publications, and reached a range of audiences through books and interviews. In this environment, public intellectuals became cultural fixtures.
Today, the intellectual sphere feels fragmented, if not entirely sidelined. The kind of person who would have once been a Chomsky or Baudrillard now has to fight for attention in a media landscape that rewards speed and virality over depth and nuance. Thinkers today aren’t household names, but niche micro-celebrities fighting for engagement on platforms where even the smartest ideas risk being reduced to viral headlines.”
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