The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
onezero.medium.com
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#2On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#3Is this a meme?
'''Calls out the internet for becoming a 'dark forest' bc of indexed, optimized, and gamified nature...posts on Medium'''
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#4As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though.
What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire solar systems - or worse (the weapons in Cixin's dark forest make the Death Star look like a drawing of a BB gun). Is that really what we have here, on the internet? When we find our autonomous zones (to steal an anarchist phrase), do Google and Facebook actively exterminate them? No. Not yet, anyway.
I think other analogies might be in order for the very real phenomenon of retreating from the corporate internet.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#5As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire s…
Actually that’s a good point. One thing I won’t tolerate in a community I host is its use to conspire against others (or even to attack them behind their backs). I would guess that happens quite a bit even in communities not set up for that purpose.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#6There are plenty of exclusive communities on the internet because it's just as useful of a tool for any illegal activity as it is for corporations trying to drive more profits.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#7As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire s…
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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#8I'd say the Internet is more like Dante's "dark wood" in that it leads to Hell, but without a Virgil and no road to Paradise (or even Purgatory) waiting at the end.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#9On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.
If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable.
The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by advertising in the print edition.
The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more than a few dollars for a phone game anymore, so a lot of devs have to find other business models to support development.
Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet
#10On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.
we make things. we make fullstack websites, we make payment processing widgets. we hook them together. a product no one wants, so it doesn't get purchased.
imagine if other hobbyists could so easily duct tape a virtual point-of-sale to their display cases. imagine if a gearhead could put a card reader on their front door, try to get the public to wander in for 5 bucks and watch, ask questions. if she could do that as easily as us web geeks could, she'd try it too.
but we're the ones with the free access to try it, so we're pioneering this model of a hobbyist product that few will pay for.