against the dark forest
December 6, 2024
The complex of ideas I’m going to call the Dark Internet Forest emerges from mostly insidery tech thinking, but from multiple directions—initially in Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler’s freeform noticings that apply science fiction writer Liu Cixin’s dark forest theory of the universe to social media, then in humanist all-arounder Maggie Appleton’s illustrated tech notes. It names an experience of paranoia and anxiety that by the end of the 2010s was widespread among people with meaningful connections between their online personas and their ability to maintain their standard of living. It hit a nerve, especially within some corners of tech-and-society thinking that influence internet makers. It even shows up in a New York Review of Books piece: a coup for something so initially modest.
Source: against the dark forest
Erin Kissane interrogates the idea of the dark forest theory of the web. It’s one of the most thoughtful pieces on this challenging and open ended topic, and she leaves us with a quest–instead of withdrawing, we should strive to reform the structural issues of the internet to create safer, more inclusive spaces.
