Rebrand!
farewell to cosmic gumbo (2022-2026)
In case you hadn’t noticed, this newsletter has a new name, www. I’m sunsetting Cosmic Gumbo in favor of something more precise. Aside from including the first letter of my last name, www. better encapsulates and articulates the aims of this newsletter, which remain the same as always: to “explore how: the Internet influences its users and the offline world; entities in power mold and use the digital realm; and rapidly-advancing technology causes, exacerbates, or solves societal issues and inequities.”
Though the www host name for web resources has increasingly become obsolete on today’s internet, it represents the standardization and simplification of access to information the World Wide Web affords Internet users.
Just as URL syntax no longer requires the www. prefix, so too has the nature of Internet usage changed over the years, with certain fundamental characteristics of the earlier Web sidelined in service to our tech overlords. Whereas the World Wide Web was created to democratize access to the Internet and facilitated connection and communication with others, the Internet landscape of today looks different depending on the user due to hyper-personalized algorithms and curated echo chambers meant to keep the user online for as long as possible.
Ease of access to the Internet has certainly increased since the early days of the World Wide Web, but it has embedded itself so deeply into our lives to the point where the online world mostly shapes culture rather than the other way around. And the version of the Internet that’s doing the shaping is one led by billionaires and brands rather than regular users.
I want to investigate all that and more in subsequent posts of this reupholstered newsletter. In the three years since I launched Cosmic Gumbo, the digital world has been drastically altered and my relationship with the internet has also shifted. In www., I hope to articulate the why and how of these changes in an idiosyncratic way that isn’t just rehashing what every other journalist/essayist/poster has had to say about them. I’ll probably write about some other, tangentially related stuff, too.1
If any of that interests you, as a wise YouTuber once said, “like and subscribe.”
Book reviews, interviews, possibly some creative nonfiction too