The internet does not simply provide a means through which we communicate, think and organise our world. Like language, it extends our capacities while requiring us to adapt to the conditions through which those capacities become possible. We increasingly arrange our thoughts, relationships, institutions and daily lives around its architectures, commercial incentives and constraints. What begins as a means of communication becomes a condition of participation, and what begins as convenience becomes dependency. The deeper contradiction is that commercial incentives increasingly reward the fragmentation of attention, restriction of access, accumulation of personal data and proliferation of complexity, while selling us services that promise convenience, connection, security and simplicity. We no longer simply use the internet to sustain our lives. Increasingly, we organise our lives to sustain the internet.
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The Internet Trap: How Convenience Became Dependency
The internet promised to make life easier. Instead, we increasingly organise our lives around its demands, adapting to systems that profit from the dependencies, distractions and frustrations they perpetuate.
