life – Auxiliary Memory

Can We Fight Back Against Enshitification?

by James Wallace Harris, 2/9/26

“Enshitification” is the trendy catchword of the moment. Cory Doctorow coined this handy term and describes what it means in his latest book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. However, I don’t think you need to read the book to get the idea. At a minimum, just listen to the interview with Doctorow and Tim Wu below on the Ezra Klein show titled “We Didn’t Ask for This Internet“:

Tim Wu covers similar ground in his book The Age of Extraction.

For my purposes, I use both terms to point to a specific kind of corporate greed that’s making our lives miserable. We could use both terms in this sentence: The relentless extraction of wealth is leading the enshitification of society.

Cory Doctorow uses the Internet to illustrate the process. Every program, app, or site begins life doing something wonderful for users. Often, their creators promise to always keep their users’ best interests at the core of their business model. But as time goes on and they need to keep making more money, they forget that promise. Eventually, they will do anything to get more users and more money.

Tim Wu models his term on the evils of private equity and similar practices. For example, in the interview, Wu gives this evil example:

In America, hospitals preferentially hire nurses through apps. And they do so as contractors. Hiring contractors means that you can avoid the unionization of nurses. And when a nurse signs on to get a shift through one of these apps, the app is able to buy the nurse’s credit history.

The reason for that is that the U.S. government has not passed a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law that made it illegal for video store clerks to disclose your VHS rental habits.

Every other form of privacy invasion of your consumer rights is lawful under federal law. So among the things that data brokers will sell to anyone who shows up with a credit card is how much credit card debt any other person is carrying, and how delinquent it is.

Based on that, the nurses are charged a kind of desperation premium. The more debt they’re carrying, the more overdue that debt is, the lower the wage that they’re offered, on the grounds that nurses who are facing economic privation and desperation will accept a lower wage to do the same job.

Now this is not a novel insight. Paying more desperate workers less money is a thing that you can find in, like, Tennessee Ernie Ford songs about 19th-century coal bosses. The difference is that if you’re a 19th-century coal boss who wants to figure out how much the lowest wage each coal miner you’re hiring is willing to take, you have to have an army of Pinkertons who are figuring out the economic situation of every coal miner, and you have to have another army of guys in green eye shades who are making annotations to the ledger where you’re calculating their pay packet. It’s just not practical. So automation makes this possible.

Doesn’t that sound like a cross between Nineteen Eighty-Four and the way China monitors its citizens? Wu is seeing how the extraction of wealth is doing something just as evil, but we could call it enshitification too.

Another example, this time from my New York Magazine subscription, “Body Cam Hustle” is about how people are making money off of videos of drunk drivers taken by the police. States enacted laws requiring police to wear body cameras to gather evidence and protect the innocent. The Internet went from promoting cute cat videos to scenes of personal shame. To show how society is also just as corrupt, audiences prefer seeing women being arrested.

I doubt I need to give any more examples, we all instantly recognize the genius of coining the word enshitification.

Cory Doctorow and Ezra Klein recall fond memories and hopes the Internet gave them when they were young. But it seems the Internet turns everything to shit eventually.

Does every sucky thing that depresses us most today connect to the Internet?

And more importantly, can we fight enshitification?

One area where I noticed people fighting back is with subscriptions. Tim Wu says subscriptions are the new, and more efficient, method of extraction. People are switching to Linux, free and open source software, unsubscribing from cloud storage, and going back to DVDs, CDs, and LPs.

Other people are taking up analog hobbies like sewing, gardening, woodworking, cooking, and handicrafts. Young people feel they are embracing the hobbies their grandparents pursued.

And other people are buying local rather than ordering online.

On the other hand, millions are adopting AI and racing full steam ahead into a dark Blade Runner-like cyberpunk future.

Does running from the clutches of Microsoft or Apple into the arms of Linux really help us escape enshitification? If Facebook and X are evil, does it make them less evil to access from Fedora and use the Brave browser? (I’m writing this post from Linux, and it’s been a struggle not to use all my favorite software tools on Windows.)

Would we be happier if we shut off the Internet and went back to televisions with antennas? I’ve contemplated what that would be like. My initial fear is that it would be lonelier. I don’t know why. I have many friends I see regularly. I guess the hive mind feels more connected.

I think we like to share. To communicate with like-minded people regarding our specific interests. Before the Internet, I was involved with science fiction fandom. I published fanzines, belonged to Amateur Press Associations (APAs), was part of a local science fiction club, and went to conventions.

I suppose I could regress.

But do people do that? Shouldn’t we figure out how to move forward and solve our enshitification problems? But how?

What if we split the internet into two segments? We keep the existing Internet, and create a new one that requires identity verification. To get a login would require visiting an agency in person and providing proof of your identity. Like when we got Read IDs. But also connect that identity to three types of biometric data. The login to the new Internet would have to be absolutely foolproof, otherwise people wouldn’t trust it.

I know this sounds scary and dangerous, but we’re already doing this piecemeal. Both corporations and criminals already know who we are.

Would people behave better on the Internet if they knew everyone knew exactly who they were? I assume that with such tracking of real identities, it would be almost impossible to rip people off since all activity would have a well-documented trail.

For this to work, corporations would have to be just as open and upfront. They would have to make all their log files public. So any individual could examine all the ways they are being tracked.

Is a much of enshitification due to anonymity and hidden corporate practices?

What if everything we did on the Internet was out in full sunlight?

I have no idea if this would help. It could make things much worse. But isn’t everything already getting much worse?

JWH

Why Did Kristin Diable’s “My River” Sound So Great On My Cheap Headphones at 5:55am This Morning?

by James Wallace Harris 1/29/26

I’ve come up with 5 reasons why I’m hearing more details in my music listening. And none of them is because I’ve bought better equipment. Some of those reasons might sound a bit woo-woo, but who knows.

I woke up early yesterday morning with the urge to hear music. I wasn’t ready to get up. The only headphones on my bedstand were a cheap pair of Bluetooth headphones I use for audiobooks. I put them on and loaded my standard Spotify playlist.

“My River” by Kristin Diable came on. It sounded amazing. For weeks, my den and bedroom stereos have sounded much better than ever. What’s going on? I’m talking a dramatic night-and-day difference on these headphones. Were my ears improving?

1 -Physiological?

Weeks ago, I stopped taking a drug I’d had been taking for years. When I asked my doctor about my chronic stuffy nose, she mentioned that sinus congestion was a side effect of that drug. Slowly, over recent weeks, I feel myself breathing more through my nose. Could this also have affected my hearing?

The only problem with this theory is that I don’t remember hearing music like this before I took the drug. Nor do I remember a decline in hearing after I started taking the drug.

2 – Time of Day?

As I lay there in the dark listening to music, all the instruments were clear and distinct. I heard little guitar riffs and drum fills I’d never noticed before. Could I have been dreaming? Diable’s voice was so multi-textured.

I do love listening to music on headphones while I sleep because sometimes I achieve a state of consciousness between sleep and awake, and I feel like I’m floating inside the music. But I was awake this morning.

I think I always hear music better late at night or early in the morning when I’m using headphones. Yesterday morning was special. It felt like a peak event. This morning, I played music again at the same time, and the music was equally vivid.

However, this doesn’t explain why music sounds better at other times during the day. Not quite as impressive as the headphones this morning, but I’ve been noticing a definite improvement in staging and fidelity.

3 – Focus?

The other day, I read an excerpt from Michael Pollan’s new book titled “How to Have a Don’t-Know Mind.” It was from the last chapter of A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, due out next month. That chapter was about staying at a Zen Buddhist retreat, where he learned that shutting off his mind led to greater powers of awareness. He spent days in a “cave” with few distractions, forcing him to slow his racing thoughts.

Was listening to music in the dark before it was time to get up, a time when my mind was inactive, letting me hear more?

Audiophiles claim to hear greater details in music than average listeners. Is that just the ability to focus? I remember back in the 1960s, and how smoking pot made music sound great. I quit getting high over fifty years ago, but I remember that I decided then that pot didn’t enhance music, but altered time and concentration. I’ve always tried to pay close attention while listening. I don’t like using music as background noise.

4 – Sense of Time

I remember getting a friend high, one who was an avid music listener, and he exclaimed that he heard things in his favorite songs he never heard before. We theorized that it might be because pot distorted our sense of time. When time slows down, we hear more.

That altered sense of time could explain why music sounds better when I’m sleeping or just waking up. But it doesn’t explain why my daytime listening also improved. Not as much, but noticeable. Maybe during the day, I’m relaxing more, focusing on the music more, slowing time down.

Maybe I should train my mind to meditate on music and shut out everything else.

5 – Technology

I was awake when Kristin Diable’s voice sounded so rich and alluring. I wasn’t in a dream state, where music sounds unbelievable. Audiophiles talk about headphones and speakers needing a burn-in period. I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of audiobooks with the Earfun headphones, but only a few hours of music. Could they have reached a burn-in stage for music?

And I haven’t listened to these headphones since Spotify switched to CD-quality streaming. That could be another factor.

But then why were the Klipsch and Polk speakers also sounding much better, too?

Conclusion

Later in the day, the music still sounded good on those headphones, but not as impressive as when I was in bed before sunrise. I tried those headphones again this morning at the same time, and wow, oh, wow.

The first song I heard was “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s a piano piece, and I thought I could discern the separate notes in chords. Every instrument sounded so distinct. I could place each spatially, and I was aware of the duration of notes. It had to be an altered sense of time.

Then I listened to “Me & Magdalena” by The Monkees. Before now, I thought only Mike sang it, but this time I could hear both Mike and Micky.

And I’m sure some people have always been able to hear such details. Even though I’ve been crazy about music since 1962, and have spent many tens of thousands of hours listening to it, I’m probably still learn how to listen. Still learning to distinguish the components that make up a gestalt.

Before I publish this, I’ve thought of one more reason. I’m getting old and retreating from the world. Music has become a refuge. I get more pleasure from listening to music than doing anything else. I wonder if the Williamson effect is taking hold of me. I had a friend named Williamson who, before he died, lost interest in his many passions, one by one. The last time I talked to him, he said listening to Duane Allman and Benny Goodman were the only things he cared about. I’ve wondered if he got down to just one before he died. Or even none.

My list of favorite things is dwindling. It’s still in the dozens, though, so I have a ways to go.

JWH

Could I Have Said “No” to Television in 1957?

by James Wallace Harris, 1/20/26

When you think about it, staring at a screen for hours on end seems weird. We exist in an immense three-dimensional reality, yet we prefer to focus on a small two-dimensional artificial reality. Why?

There are possible explanations. We don’t view reality directly, but rather perceive what we think is reality through a recreation within our minds. And our minds love making up stories to explain everything, and usually, they have little to do with reality. At night, our unconscious minds generate dreams that feel like another reality.

Is it any wonder we’re so addicted to fiction on a screen? Make-believe is so much easier than the complexity of reality.

Before screens, there were books, plays, storytellers, tall tales, and gossip. Humans interact with reality with words and language, but those tools are so imprecise that they encourage us to make stuff up that’s not there.

So, back in 1957, when I was five, could I have rejected television? Could my little mind have said, “This is fake, I’m going out to ride my bike?”

I wish I had, but I didn’t. Guessing that I watch four hours of television a day on average, that means since January 1, 1957, I’ve spent 100,884 hours in front of the boob tube. They claim it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become great at doing anything. I could have become an expert at ten endeavors if I had said “No” to television.

A more important question is: Can I say “No” to television in 2026?

Why spend the last years of my existence glued to a television or computer screen?

Reality feels the most real when I’m outside working in the yard. I can feel the heat of a nearby star, the changing atmospheric conditions, and watch the plants, trees, birds, bugs, and animals coexist in an ecology. At night, I can see the moon, planets, stars, and even galaxies. Nature should be the most stimulating part of my existence. But it’s not.

My mind prefers to dwell on music, books, magazines, TV shows, movies, the internet, and YouTube. Why is watching old episodes of Mr. Novak from 1963 more rewarding than raking leaves or watching birds at their feeder?

I think it’s because I didn’t say “No” to television in 1957. Like people embracing religion for a lifetime at an early age, I worshipped at the television set. I wasn’t smart enough to make a choice.

Years before 1957, I remember my mother putting my sister and me in front of the TV to watch Kukla, Fran and Ollie or Romper Room as she got dressed in the morning. And after them, it was Captain Kangaroo. But I’m not blaming my mother. TV was irresistible. When my parents weren’t around, I’d turn it on. I have distinct memories of doing that by myself at age five. I remember watching Gunsmoke by myself in 1957.

I suppose if my parents had coached me in learning little activities, I might have become used to actively doing things rather than sitting in front of the TV. To be fair, in 1957, I have memories of playing with toy trucks in the scrubery, riding my bike, playing with friends, walking to school, and spending weeks pretending to be a pirate while sailing in an old wooden crate.

However, all those activities lacked much conscious effort. Becoming good at anything requires a conscious effort. I’m not sure kids do that on their own. I never had a mentor to get me started.

Watching television or doomscrolling is deliciously an unconscious effort.

I could never have said “No” to television in 1957 on my own. That would have only happened if I had the guidance of a wiser person. And they would have had to show me a better alternative.

I’ve contemplated giving up television for all my adult life. Intellectually, I know there are better ways to spend my time in reality. But I got conditioned to television at a young age, and I’ve never been able to reprogram myself.

I really should try. I only have a few more years in this reality.

If you don’t want your kids addicted to screens their entire lives, I recommend mentoring them in other activities.

JWH

Create and Control Your Own Algorithm

by James Wallace Harris, 12/6/25

If you get your news from social media sites, they will feed you what they learn you want to hear. Each site has its own algorithm to help you find the information you prefer. Such algorithms create echo chambers that play to your confirmation bias. It becomes a kind of digital mental masturbation.

Getting information from the internet is like drinking from a firehose. I hate to use such a cliche phrase, but it’s so true. Over the past decade, I’ve tried many ways to manage this flow of information. I’ve used RSS feed readers, news aggregators, social media sites, browser extensions, and smartphone apps. I’m always overwhelmed, and eventually, their algorithms feed me the same shitty content that thrills my baser self.

I’ve recently tried to reduce my information flow by subscribing to just four print magazines: Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine. I’m still deluged with news. However, I’m hoping the magazine editors will intelligently curate the news for me and keep me out of my own echo chamber.

I’ve even tried to limit my news intake to just one significant essay a day. For example, “The Chatbot-Delusion Crisis” by Matteo Wong from The Atlantic was yesterday’s read. Even while trying to control my own algorithm, I’ve been drawn to similar stories lately — about the dangers of social media and AI.

Today’s article, “When Chatbots Break Our Minds,” by Charlie Warzel, features an interview with Kashmir Hill. In the interview, Hill refers to her article in The New York Times, “Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.”

If I could program my own algorithm for news reading, one of the main features I’d hope to create is dazzling myself with news about important things I knew nothing about. I’d call such a feature Black Swan Reporting.

Another essential feature I’d want in my algorithm, I’d call Your Full of Shit. This subroutine would look for essays that show me how wrong or delusional I am. For example, for us liberals, we were deluded in thinking our cherished ideals made most Americans happy.

Another useful feature would be Significant News Outside the United States. For example, I listened to a long news story in one of my magazines about how Australia will soon enact a law that bans children under 16 from having social media accounts. This is a significant social experiment I hadn’t heard about, and one that other countries will try in 2026. None of my social media feeds let me know, but then maybe they want to keep such experiments secret.

Mostly, I’d want my algorithm to show me Important Things I Don’t Know, which is the exact opposite of what social media algorithms do.

However, I might need to go beyond one article a day to keep up with current events. That risks turning up the feed to fire hose velocity. How much news do we really need? I’m willing to give up an hour a day to one significant news story that’s educational and enlightening. I might be willing to give up another hour for several lighter but useful stories about reality.

I hate to admit it, but I doom scroll YouTube and Facebook one to two hours a day because of idle moments like resting after working in the yard or waking up in the middle of the night. And their algorithms have zeroed in on my favorite distractions, ones that are so shallow that I’m embarrassed to admit what they are.

The whole idea of creating a news algorithm driven by self-awareness is rather daunting. But I think we need to try. I’m reading too many stories about how we’re all damned by social media and AI.

I’m anxious to hear what kids in Australia do. Will they go outside and play, or will they find other things on their smartphones to occupy their time? What if the Australian government is forcing a generation to just play video games and look at porn?

JWH

Reading With a Purpose

by James Wallace Harris, 11/12/25

I used to keep up with the world by watching NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, reading The New York Times on my iPhone, and bingeing YouTube videos. I felt well-informed. That was an illusion.

I then switched to reading The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Magazine. I focused on the longer articles and developed the habit of reading one significant essay a day. That has taught me how superficial my previous methods were at informing me about what’s going on around the world. Television, the internet, and newspapers were giving me soundbites, while articles provide an education.

However, I still tend to forget this deeper knowledge just as quickly. I don’t like that. I feel like I learn something significant every day. What I’m learning feels heavy and philosophical. However, it drives me nuts that I forget everything so quickly. And I’m not talking about dementia. I think we all forget quickly. Just remember how hard it was to prepare for tests back in school.

I’ve watched dozens of YouTube videos about study methods, and they all show that if you don’t put information to use, it goes away. Use it or lose it. I’ve decided to start reading with a purpose.

At first, I thought I would just save the best articles and refer to them when I wanted to remember. That didn’t work. I quickly forget where I read something. Besides, that approach doesn’t apply any reinforcing methods.

I then thought about writing a blog post for each article. It turns out it takes about a day to do that. And I still forget. I needed something simpler.

I then found Recall AI.

It reads and analyzes whatever webpage you’re on. Providing something like this for today’s article by Vann R. Newkirk II, “What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century:”

Recall allows me to save this into a structure. But again, this is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. If I were writing an essay or book, this would be a great tool for gathering research.

Recall is also great for understanding what I read. Helpful with quick rereading.

This morning, I got a new idea to try. What if I’m trying to remember too much? What if I narrowed down what I wanted to remember to something specific?

Within today’s article, the author used the term “climate gentrification” referring to neighborhoods being bought up because they were safer from climate change, and thus displacing poor people. The article mentions Liberty City, a poor neighborhood in Miami, with a slightly higher elevation, bought up by developers moving away from low-lying beachfront development.

I think I can remember that concept, climate gentrification. What if I only worked on remembering specific concepts? This got me thinking. I could collect concepts. As my collection grew, I could develop a classification system. A taxonomy of problems that humanity faces. Maybe a Dewey Decimal system of things to know.

I use a note-taking system called Obsidian. It uses hyperlinks to connect your notes, creating relationships between ideas. I could create a vault for collecting concepts. Each time I come across a new concept, I’d enter it into Obsidian, along with a citation where I found it. That might not be too much work.

I picked several phrases I want to remember and study:

Climate gentrification
Heat islands
Climate dead zones
Insurance market collapse
Climate change acceleration
Economic no-go zones
Corporate takeover of public services
Climate change inequality
Histofuturism
Sacrifice zones
Corporate feudalism

Contemplating this list made me realize that remembering where I read about each concept will take too much work. I have a browser extension, Readwell Reader, that lets me save the content of a web page. I could save every article I want to remember into a folder and then use a program to search for the concept words I remember to find them.

I just did a web search on “climate gentrification” and found it’s already in wide use. I then searched for “corporate feudalism,” and found quite a bit on it too. This suggests I’m onto something. That instead of trying to remember specifically what I read and where, I focus on specific emerging concepts.

Searching on “histofuturism” brought up another article at The Atlantic that references Octavia Butler: “How Octavia Butler Told the Future.” Today’s article by Vann R. Newkirk II is also built around Octavia Butler. This complicates my plan. It makes me want to research the evolution of the concept, which could be very time-consuming.

The point of focusing on key concepts from my reading is to give my reading purpose that will help me remember. But there might be more to it. Concepts are being identified all the time. And they spread. They really don’t become useful until they enter the vernacular. Until a majority of people use a phrase like “climate gentrification,” the reality it points to isn’t visible.

That realization reinforces my hunch to focus on concepts rather than details in my reading. Maybe reading isn’t about specific facts, but about spreading concepts?

JWH