Cheerful Lack of Introspection
-- Haruki Murakami
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Another Sunday, Another Naive Weekly — Observations From The Internet Wilderness.
Hi Reader,
Every morning, when I lived in Singapore, I’d pick up the daily edition of The International Herald Tribune to cut out intriguing photos and headlines. I lived on the 14th floor in a student dorm with fake wood furniture and sterile lighting.
The cutouts from the newspaper were my attempt to personalise the blank, white wall above my desk. The goal was obscurity. I was gluing the headlines from natural disasters onto the photo of a football team celebrating a victory.
I was reminded of my old hobby when reading the latest essay by Murakami in The New Yorker about his booming t-shirt collection. Ana and I have an almost complete collection of his books, and my notebooks are full of his quotes. Now I have also used his words for the subject line of this newsletter.
With care,
Kristoffer
ROADSIDE FLOWERS
FIELD NOTES
The Digital Death of Collecting
“Building a collection on the internet is like building a sandcastle on the beach: eventually the tide washes in, and it’s as if it never existed in the first place.” I adore this essay by Kyle Chayka about how our digital cultural consumption is changing our responsibility in forming taste and limiting our ability to store memories.
The Word for Web is Forest
I include this essay by Claire Evans because I envy her clever use of Ursula K. Le Guinn’s ‘The Word for World is Forest” in the title. But also because it is one of the leading essays in the first issue of New Public, a promising addition to the list of publications about the internet. As for the essay itself, I enjoy her reflections on the wood wide web, but find myself estranged from the characterisation of the web as a sad forest. It is too gloomy a picture from the reality I encounter when browsing around.
Hi, I’m Kristoffer and you have just read Naive Weekly — Observations from the Internet Wilderness.
Last week this letter was sent to 758 people. Thirtyone are crazy enough to chip in every month/year to support me making time to write. Logo by Studio Hollywood. Print by Luka. Photograph by Ana Santl.