I know this is a clickbaity, but I think more readers need to be aware of Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic Linkdump. With the glut of available linkdumps in the ether-sphere, why amplify this one?
First, Doctorow’s links are generated by a deep and long standing well of info he calls the memex. It is a 20+ year store of Doctorow’s digital feldgangs. Here he tells the tale of the Memex Method–how he did it and why it signifies. Astonishment numero uno.
Every day, I load my giant folder of tabs; zip through my giant collection of RSS feeds; and answer my social telephones — primarily emails and Twitter mentions — and I open each promising fragment in its own tab to read and think about.
If the fragment seems significant, I’ll blog it: I’ll set out the context for why I think this seems important and then describe what it adds to the picture.
These repeated acts of public description adds each idea to a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragmentary elements that have the potential to become something bigger. Every now and again, a few of these fragments will stick to each other and nucleate, crystallizing a substantial, synthetic analysis out of all of those bits and pieces I’ve salted into that solution of potential sources of inspiration.
That’s how blogging is complimentary to other forms of more serious work: when you’ve done enough of it, you can get entire essays, speeches, stories, novels, spontaneously appearing in a state of near-completeness, ready to be written.
Second, the result of the Memex Method are linkdumps. These dumps are muse-pools, inspiring his relentless publishing efforts, what Steven Pressfield calls “a practice”. He makes these pools available on the plurastic.net site. Astonishment again. Read this one: Brinkwhump Linkdump (02 Mar 2024), but be forewarned. This molehole is deep and ringed with sharp cognitive dissonance spikes. This one in particular bites: the Torment Nexus. Doctorow writes in this linkdump:
But no matter how many times we insist that the torment nexus shouldn’t be created, the boardrooms of end-stage capitalism continue to invent them. Take HP, the poster-child for enshittification, edging out even KPMG in the race to turn everything into a pile of shit. After years of tormenting people to punish them for wanting to print things, HP has announced a new service that so mustache-twirlingly evil that it lacks verisimilitude:
Here’s the pitch: HP will sell you a printer that you don’t own. In addition to paying a monthly fee for your ink – which you pay no matter whether you print or not – you will also pay a monthly fee just for having HP’s printer on your premises. You are absolutely, positively forbidden from using third-party ink in this printer, and must use HP’s own ink, which sells for about $10,000/gallon.
But while you aren’t allowed to use this printer in ways that are bad for HP’s shareholders, HP is absolutely free to use the printer in ways that are bad for you. When you click through the signup agreement, you grand HP permission to surveil every document you print – and your home wifi network more generally – and to sell that data to anyone and everyone.
What’s more, HP reserves the right to discipline you with punitive credit-card charges if you disconnect this printer from the internet, on the basis that doing so makes it harder for them to spy on your printer.
Never buy anything from HP, else be tormented for-ev-ah. You cannot make this shit up like Dante did. The list of good sources to follow seems improbable, but that is Doctorow’s superpower and he ain’t no poser. Here are just a few names he dropped that I now feel duty bound to read: Maureen Tkacik, Eric Blanc, and Molly White.
And he does this daily or nearly every day. He tops off the day with a bit of history from 2009, 2014, and 2019 as well as a report on his working life he calls the Colophon.
It is a mansion with more adjacencies than I care to cite. You go. Maybe we will meet there in the margins and be astonished together.
