This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Being Mentored by the Longform Podcast

I am a young writer by every definition, twenty-one and relatively inexperienced. My ideas for my career are half-formed. Accordingly, this is an education-heavy portion of my life, which is good. I’m not going to college like many of my peers, but I am actively learning and developing myself as an editorial professional (broadly speaking).

the Longform podcast

Part of that is working, part of it is reading, and an increasingly large part is listening — not only to people in my “real” life, but also listening to wise strangers who aren’t addressing me specifically. For instance, I pay close attention to the journalists interviewed by Max Linsky, Aaron Lammer, and Evan Ratliff on the Longform podcast. (Only a few months ago, I didn’t like podcasts, but that opinion changed quickly after I acquired a commute.)

I don’t have access to many professional writers in my “real” life. Sure, occasionally I hang out with Adam Brinklow and I got to meet Yael Grauer the other day, but mostly I encounter regular people with a bunch of different types of jobs. Which is fine — variety is the spice of life, right? Only interacting with one type of person would be like having salt on your food and eschewing all over flavors.

But I dearly want to feel connected to people who do the work I aspire to. The Longform podcast gives me a window into the circumstances and habits of journalists I admire, and it feels… nourishing. It makes me believe the career I’m in love with is possible.

It’s awesome that the internet enables this. I know it was technically possible back when people mainly read words on paper, but not in the same way, at the same scale, or on demand. In 1985 I couldn’t have Twitter-followed everyone who wrote an article I liked, to keep up with their future posts and maybe talk to them personally. Being able to do that is so cool — and it helps me stay motivated.

the internet is a ship
The Flying Dutchman by Dean Meyers.

Who Is Me Dot Com

On Sunday I’m going to meet a new friend from Twitter. That’s not bizarre — I have IRL Tumblr friends; I met my boyfriend via OkCupid; recently I landed an internship with a blogger I respect. However, this will be my first prospective friendship that feels adult, like it emerged from my professional life. I’m a little nervous.

My internet self is not particularly different from my “real” self — after all, people are multifaceted. And, to stretch the metaphor, we’re constantly rotating. Various circumstances lead me to present one side of my personality versus another.

online personas
Illustration by Surian Soosay.

Jamie Lauren Keiles wrote on Vice“We need not fully become our online personas in the future, but surely we can make space for them as something real and integral to the project of building a tangible life and an authentic self.” Keiles’ quote implies that separation is the dominant state of affairs, which doesn’t jive with my own experience of online discourse or my personal digital presence.

Internet me is just me. Physical me is also me. The separation between those two self-entities, although they are perceived as culturally distinct, is obviously artificial.

I think I’m trying to convince myself that meeting this new friend won’t be weird. I want to believe that I shouldn’t be worried because me = me = me, regardless of venue. Honestly, nothing else is realistic.

Tech Is Only Awful Like People Are Awful

News-media analyst Ken Doctor wrote, “The web may have opened unbelievable frontiers of human thought and interaction, but it’s driven by the same business principles as all other enterprise.” Basically, the market is always the market. Self-interest is a perpetual motivator and supply-demand dynamics continue to exist.

The internet changes a lot, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals of economics. It changes the cost (or lack thereof) of some specific things, like distributing information, but it doesn’t change basic human behavior. It’s kind of ludicrous that anyone might expect it to.

DARPA's Warrior Web project may provide super-human enhancements
Photo via US Army RDECOM.

So here’s the point, which has been made before: Everything we don’t like about the implications of technology boils down to something we don’t like about the way humans organize ourselves. Because — to risk repetition — technology doesn’t change humanity; it simply enables us to express our persistent nature in new/different/tweaked ways.

For example, as Adam Elkus wrote on Slate, “Algorithms are impersonal, biased, emotionless, and opaque because bureaucracy and power are impersonal, emotionless, and opaque and often characterized by bias, groupthink, and automatic obedience to procedure.” An algorithm like the one that defines Facebook’s Newsfeed didn’t spring into being independent of people’s choices; it was constructed and enacted based on such choices.

DARPA's Warrior Web project may provide super-human enhancements
Photo via US Army RDECOM.

Most consumers don’t know, think, or care about the value judgments being made by the engineers and programmers who design the functionality of apps, phones, thermostats, cars, etc. As long as a product gives us something pleasurable or useful, we brush aside collateral concerns. (Apathy toward data collection is a great example of this.)

Industries respond to what people — and aggregates of people — actually care about, which is expressed via money. As Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “Markets are designed to make their own rationality. Where people put their cash reflects what they think and desire.”

Society is unjust because people are unjust, individually and collectively. We often don’t truly care about the things we claim are crucial, or the principles we tout as cherished values. (God save reporters’ salaries.) This is reflected in how humans make and use technology, just as it’s reflected in every other human endeavour. Susie Cagle’s series “The Crooked Valley” illustrates this (literally) very well.

Farhad Manjoo Explains How Oblivious We Are To Self-Deception

“I’ve examined what happens to audiences — that is, we ordinary people — in a world of unprecedented media choice: we begin to select our reality according to our biases, and we interpret evidence (such as photos and videos) and solicit expertise in a way that pleases us.” So writes Farhad Manjoo in his book True Enough, which documents how the internet has eroded the standards for informational accuracy.

Farhad Manjoo's Twitter headshot
Illustration via Twitter.

Using case studies from the news, Manjoo points to selection bias, perception bias, and lack of context as factors influencing the public’s persistent wrongness about some issues, especially politics. He overviews convincing research and explains that if you interpreted things based on first impressions, you would frequently misunderstand complex events. Which is exactly what happens! We listen to an ostensible expert’s credentials, respond to their personal charisma or lack of it, and decide whether to believe them over the other guy based on nothing more than charm.

The problem is, you can’t know what you don’t know. (Thanks, Rumsfeld.) If you’re not an expert in a certain field, you can’t tell who’s a real authority and who is inflating their own importance and credibility.

What’s ironic is that I believe Manjoo’s assessment of this whole situation — not because I’ve independently combed through the documents and consulted other authorities on the topics at hand. I believe him because he writes well, his ideas appeal to common sense, and he’s a columnist for The New York Times. The back of the book carries praise from another journalist and an academic, whose opinions I also did not independently verify.

I find Manjoo’s work compelling for exactly the reasons he cites as being behind many scandals, conspiracies, and other misconceptions.

The Negatively Promising Future of Bitcoin

physical bitcoin
Photo by Antana.

I could have called this post, “Why I’m Bearish On Bitcoin”. The draft has been in my notes for a long time. I might as well see if anyone will bother to flesh out the idea, or disagree with me — either reaction is welcome! Digital currencies are on my mind today because I had lunch with my friend Eva Gantz, who is the community manager at Stellar. She is, coincidentally, stellar! Anyway…

Bitcoin believer needs micropayments
Photo by scottks.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will fail because of the feature for which they are most lauded: theoretically, no trust required. Veteran journalist Felix Salmon has noted this flaw, as has Sidney Sida Zhang. Cryptocurrencies don’t just incorporate anonymity and lack of trust — they depend on it. Unfortunately for the future of techno-libertarian money, trust is what makes human systems work.

I struggle with this in my personal life. I like to be in control, but I have to outsource what I don’t know how to do, or don’t have time to do. For example, someone else grows the food that I eat. Someone else wrote the code for my website. Someone else takes care of plumbing infrastructure. I have to trust all those people to do their jobs. To a certain extent I can verify them, through consumer and political procedures, through tracking journalism, but eventually it comes down to trust. Trust is essential societal grease.

bitcoin accepted here
Photo by Steve Jurvetson.

That’s my entire hypothesis, pretty much. Here’s some interesting cryptocurrency reading (in addition to the articles I linked above by Salmon and Zhang):

I emailed Martin Weigert about this a while ago, and he told me, “I have not worried so much about trust when it comes to Bitcoin. But probably that is because I have only bought like a half Bitcoin so far, so there was always the acceptance of a potential total loss.” Then he asked if my qualms were about Bitcoin specifically or the whole technological basis of it. The following is my response:

beautiful bitcoin wallpaper
Artwork by Jason Benjamin.

From what I’ve read, the base technology is pretty sound. People are very excited about the blockchain. The concern is re: wallets and banks. Inevitably you have to trust a third party to “take care of” your Bitcoins, and sometimes that doesn’t go well, when banks are hacked or abscond with the funds. So the third party must be trustworthy. There have to be checks and balances, leading to centralized authorities, which is what Bitcoin enthusiasts wanted to circumvent.

Then I dropped more links into the thread:

So? What do you think?

Sign up for my newsletter to stay abreast of my new writing and projects.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).