emilieschario / favorite_essays

Updating list of favorite internet essays

My Favorite Essyas

These are the most important essays I’ve read that have shaped my understanding of the online world. Inspired by this list.

Essay Title	Author	Summary
The Tyranny of Structurelessness	Jo Freeman	Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion.
I Hate the News	Aaron Swartz	Reading the mainstream news doesn’t give us any benefits because we can’t act on it. We’re made to feel helpless. We’re better off reading a book.
A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy	Clay Shirky	Groups behave both as groups and as individuals, meaning that groups online are constantly in conflict with each other and themselves.
The Web is a Customer Service Medium	Paul Ford	“Why Wasn’t I Consulted” is an important question to ask when being online
I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately	Alice E. Marwick, danah Boyd	We have different contexts depending on which people we spend time with. The internet has erased that.
Reflections on the programming life	Ellen Ullman	What programming is like at the micro level
The Anaconda and the Chandelier	Perry Link	Why the threat of surveillance is scarier than actual surveillance
In Praise of the Flaneur	Bijan Stephen	Walking purposelessly around the internet is no longer an option
Woods+	Paul Ford	It’s about Google+, but even more.
The Submarine	Paul Graham	How marketing and newspapers work
How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to my Epic Hacking	Mat Honan	On Apple IDs and digital identity