{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "This is the best book I've read on communication, technology and the intersection of the two in some time. It contains some criticism of social media (which is always well deserved) but, instead, posits that communication mediums can and do impact the message. Beyond that broad message that defines the book, Carr assembles a compelling list of references and citations, even featuring anecdotes I was entirely unfamiliar with (like the radio chatter surrounding the sinking of the Titanic that stymied rescue efforts). Carr builds his case gradually, opening with an anecdote about a #superbloom event and its real world effects before cycling back through a history of advances in communication mediums. Carr traces and carefully lays out a case for how each step in advancing communications altered communications. It's easy to see how books made transmitting ideas easier, how the telephone made transmitting ideas faster without considering how that impacted the people and societies using them. It's not simply that they're tools, it's how those tools more broadly impact culture, society, the people using them and how they process information. We've seen all of this play out in things as simple as being able to keep in touch with distant relatives. You speak to them, you know things about them, but do you know them? It's similar to how you collect acquaintances on social media as you move through life. You observe their life and they observe yours, but you don't know each other, you're not friends, your simply digital echoes passing one another in the ether. That accumulation of connections, removal of real human contact and growing insularity is at the root of the technologies of mass communication malign influence on society. You see your neighbor in passing, are friendly and then shout at them through a screen. It reduces you and your relationships down to what the medium allows for and, now, that medium is controlled by private companies and what they allow for is what best allows them to profit from your presence on their platform. One solution the author mentions is to build friction into communication platforms. Do you really want to say that? To share that? To shout that into the void? Do you believe in what you're saying so much that you'll pay to increase its reach? The problem there is that there is simply no will to implement friction to apps that the vast majority of people are, to varying degrees, addicted to. Paying for reach provides an inherent advantage with the means and privilege to pay for it. I don't have a solution, but I'm grateful for the insights in this book and the framing. On an individual level it is possible to eschew much of the toxicity now inseparable from modern communications platforms but doing so comes with the cost of social disconnection. Perhaps that's not so bad. It's easier to manage fewer relationships, quality relationships and that can be done with simple text messages and phone calls. It's slower and perhaps that's for the best.",
  "path": "/reading/books/9781324064619/superbloom",
  "publishedAt": "2025-11-04T00:00:00Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:sttgf52vkk46f6yuknvqxvgh/site.standard.publication/self",
  "tags": [
    "ai",
    "tech",
    "social media",
    "law"
  ],
  "title": "Superbloom"
}