The Weekly Reading List - June 23

A post-internet world, Gertrude Stein (and Fran Leibowitz), Bach for babies, and, of course, baseball.

Welcome to The Weekly Reading List, in which I compile a collection of interesting articles, poems, and other media.

What have you been reading this week, and what have you been thinking about? Let me know down in the comments.

The Incinerated Internet

I often fantasize the end of the internet. I don’t fantasize about going back to a pre-internet time — I don’t believe we could ever really ‘go back.’ (This actually extends to what I think about self-styled traditionalists — if your view is that we need to go back, then the project is doomed. The question is always how we should move forward.) But it is nice to think about how we might live in a world that is not quite so dominated by the whims of algorithms, or by the few who actually control how those algorithms work.

I’ll admit the irony here. I am, to use the dread phrase, a content creator. My whole life revolves around algorithms. I’m biting the hand that feeds.

My friend Seth, a kindred spirit when it comes to these sorts of things, sent me this article by Tom Cox. Cox does a great job of making it clear how, exactly, the end of the internet would not be the ushering in of a new utopia — though he does it with a sly grin.

What Will Life Really Be Like After The Internet Gets Incinerated?

Susia Asado

I’ve been enjoying our recent forays into poetry, first with Yeats and then with Wordsworth. Today, a poem from Gertrude Stein.