The Internet

Stories on the past, present, and future of the information superhighway

Online Shopping For More Than Just Good Value

Just as none of us has exactly the same combination of shopping habits and values, what we’ve lost as shopping becomes more and more a digital act is also more personal and specific–I only hope that no single experience will dominate.
Sulagna Misra
5 min read

WhatsApp Wants You To Stop Sharing Fake Stories

WhatsApp has key differences with platforms like Facebook and Twitter: it is private social media, which makes it harder to study its impact on democracy.
Samira Shackle
3 min read

Archiving the Infinite Stream

There is a sort of negligent impermanence to so much of what we put online. Quick hits, falling off the feed just as quickly. Whole platforms with impermanence built in, content meant to disappear after a set amount of time. What kind of stories are we allowed to record and keep?
Elizabeth Minkel
2 min read

Please YouTubers, Don’t Make Us Pay To Interview You

Why should someone whose days are spent talking to a camera for money not talk to a journalist for money as well? Where’s the collaboration? Where’s the audience sharing? Where’s the contract?
Ian Steadman
2 min read

Gone Gone Gopher

Today we “browse the web,” but we almost ended up “digging around in Gopherspace.”
Richard Baguley
4 min read

Meet Jon Postel, the Man Who Invented dot com

“If the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel.”
Duncan Geere
3 min read

The Nearly-Webs

Five weird ways we’ve tried to connect.
Matt Locke
3 min read

Welcome to Onionland

An interview with journalist Jamie Bartlett about innovation on the Dark Net.
Alice Bell
6 min read

TV Shows Could Power the Internet of Things

Energy efficient chips can communicate with each other, powered only by ambient communication waves.
Mark Harris
2 min read

Building BRCK: The Made-in-Africa Wireless Router

It’s a “go anywhere, do anything, self-powered, mobile WiFi device.”
Ken Banks
4 min read