Everyone sits in the same traffic now

Josh Citarella and I discuss this essay in a new episode of New Creative Era. Listen on Apple, Spotify, and the web.My model of the internet is the global village. Its topography a sprawling universe of houses and neighborhoods beyond what you can see. You can go forever and never know what you’ll find. This is the wonder of the internet to me.Image handrawn by meIn the last two decades, this landscape changed as new infrastructure built by a handful of companies (mainly Google, Meta, and Amazon) reorganized the web. The original village of the internet, with its infinite choice and discovery, still remains. Only now these big highways of the Instagram feed, the TikTok feed, Amazon search, and others cut through and over everything. Where once there had been neighborhoods and communities, there’s now an eight-lane blacktop dotted with billboards and exit ramps sold at auction to advertisers.Even though the internet offers infinite possibilities, everyone sits in the same traffic…