Notes on Feeds (2017)
“Notes on Feeds” was a piece that I wrote to accompany Printed Web 5: Bot Anthologia, which launched simultaneously at Interrupt 4 at Brown University, where I delivered the talk, and at Trust and Believe at Eyebeam, a one-day event organized by Nora N. Khan and Sam Hart, where the publication was being distributed. This was the first essay where I sketched out ideas about the post and the feed as forms in network culture, which I further developed in subsequent writings. I self-published the essay as a newsprint broadsheet that was distributed along with Printed Web 5.
“Today, the coffee pot watches us. We’re observed and heard. In public and in private spaces, and in our own homes.
As our tolerance for surveillance expands, what it means to watch has shifted. In the new boredom, Horning says, we desire a sort of ‘god’ view as a collective subject, becoming the they who does the observing, instead of the me being seen. Our new position might feel like a kind of safe, removed resistance. A soothing counter to the police state.
But keeping us watching is part of the deal. Pure, passive consumption—that somehow feels active and powerful, at the same time. A reverse panopticon, where we participate in the very structures that oppress.”