SAVE THE INTERNET

Culture has been flattened by the past 25 years of internet technology, and radical alternatives need values that incumbents cannot easily copy. The democratization of production is described as amateurization that yields mediocrity, while a few mega-institutions, including Meta, Elon Musk, Uber and Airbnb, accumulate power. Crypto is cited as an example of how friction creates borders that define alternative values, and Facebook and Google are compared to the Tower of Babel. Apple is analyzed as valuing the individual and status, which the text says produces narcissism and isolation.