iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

It's true: we used AI to see just how much Americans hate AI, and if you leave us enough comments, I'll try to use AI to see how much y'all hate us using AI to see how much Americans hate AI. (From me, @jjw.bsky.social, Sabrina Rodriguez, and @jamesbenedict.bsky.social) www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

wsj.com

We Used AI to Find Out Just How Much Americans Hate AI

Opposition to AI, data centers and Flock cameras brought people together like few other issues, and it is showing up in the midterms.

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Brian Whitton @noslouch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

NEW from me, @neilmhta.bsky.social and @sabrod123.bsky.social. Mentions of Trump on MAGA podcasts have fallen off a cliff since the 2024 election. With the midterms right around the corner, what are they talking about now? If you've been near TikTok lately, then you've probably got a guess.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Here's a deeply generous review of my book on Bill Tammeus's blog, "Faith Matters." He compared me to Annie Dillard, a hero of mine who sadly recently passed, and I can imagine few higher compliments. Here's the review: substack.com/home/post/p-... Here's the book: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

In one sense, it’s simply a book that describes how rapidly the internet and electronic communications in general are changing and how that means that what we think we know about all this today will almost certainly be out of date by this time next week. (Add in artificial intelligence and many of us are even more lost.)

But the book is more than that. It’s also a book about understanding that we cannot and will not live forever and the sooner we recognize that and then start to act as if that’s true, the more generative and full version of life we will lead, one that includes our responses to the inevitable spiritual and religious questions that will face us even if we don’t want to face them.

Despite telling me more than I’ll ever want to know about digital communications, this book engaged me because it asked the deeper questions, pondered the right mysteries and drew wise conclusions about humanity’s future. And here and there West’s style of writing even reminded me somehow of authors Annie Dillard and my friend Kathleen Norris and how they use words to break open new insights.

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Bennington Writing Seminars @benningtonwriting.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Happy Publication Day to John West, MFA '18 (Nonfiction)! His book, THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age, is out today from Here Below Books. vist.ly/5hyd8

Bearded man next to book cover titled 'The Internet Will Die, And So Will You' by John West.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Thanks to @kofinas.bsky.social for being such a thoughtful interlocutor in this conversation about my book! It's the dream of pretty much every author (I think) to talk to someone who's so willing to dig into the text--and draw on such broad expertise about what you're writing about.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Want a free copy of THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU? Well, there's a Goodreads giveaway through the end of August for fifteen copies of it! (Don't worry, you're still welcome to purchase a copy, even if the Goodreads gods fail you.) www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

goodreads.com

Book giveaway for The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age by John West Aug 03-Aug 28, 2026

Enter to win one of 15 free copies available. Giveaway dates from Aug 03-Aug 28, 2026. From a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I've listened to PJ Vogt's podcasts ever since TL;DR, through REPLY ALL, and all the way to SEARCH ENGINE. Here's what he said about my book, THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU. You can preorder it here: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

A quote from PJ Vogt, host of "Search Engine," about my book, THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU: "A book about loss that's somehow a pleasure."

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

A weird part of writing a book is cold-emailing people you admire and asking them to say something nice. I've long admired @anildash.com for his willingness to go against the grain in a field that rewards group-think masquerading as contrarianism. Here's what he said. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

A picture of the book, THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, with the quote: "John West offers us a way to find the meaning and soul that's missing in today's technology." From Anil Dash

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The first review of THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU is out from Publishers Weekly: "His wide-ranging meditations, which touch on everything from Bach to TikTok, will appeal to readers who want to search for meaning rather than scroll for distraction." www.publishersweekly.com/9780802885425

A review of The Internet Will Die, and So Will You:

> Pulitzer-winning journalist West (Lessons and Carols) charts the internet’s “shift from human agency to platform agency” and lays out a path for users to reclaim the former in this philosophical guide to the digital age. He argues that the internet only appears infinite and frictionless. Instead, it is as finite and mortal as the humans who code and use it, as evidenced by cloud outages and broken links. Humans lost sight of this reality, he explains, as they increasingly “entrusted the management of our digital metropolis to others,” namely Big Tech platforms like Google and Meta, and thus ceded their choice over how to engage with the internet. West calls on the reader to take back their agency over what they choose to remember and what they choose to forget—a practice he refers to as a sabbath—by, for example, screenshotting a social media post that makes them laugh out loud or searching for poems to commit to memory. But even he acknowledges that people cannot “sabbath our way out of the web that ensnares us.” His wide-ranging meditations, which touch on everything from Bach to TikTok, will appeal to readers who want to search for meaning rather than scroll for distraction. (Sept.)

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

I can’t remember who said this, but it’s true: the LLM future looks a lot like endlessly communicating an idea by inflating and deflating it with computers—at great cost.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

this is an incredible story (and my colleagues are incredible reporters).

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Hugh Ryan @hughryan.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

MY BAD: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE QUEER 90S AND BEYOND comes out in one week and I am certainly not freaking out about it! There's still time to get 20% off the hardcover by preordering from Hachette with the code MYBAD20. All my June tour dates are below! www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hugh-...

hachettebookgroup.com

My Bad

A powerful and hilarious personal history that tells the true story of the queer ’90s and how it transformed queer life in the decades that followed.“Dee...

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tamara @milquetoast7.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

The Internet Will Die, and So Will You by @johnwest.bsky.social ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ First! too much internet, not enough death :) www.netgalley.com/book/824047/...

netgalley.com

The Internet Will Die, and So Will You

I just reviewed The Internet Will Die, and So Will You by John West

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Stephen Judkins @stephenjudkins.bsky.social · 22/07/2024

RETVRN to computers with integral bench seating

A Cray supercomputer with a mustachioed business dude sitting on the integral bench

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Attention is precious. The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (by John West) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This is what journalism is supposed to be about.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I went to the Met (for the first time ever!). My partner and I decided to pick a piece to sit and stare at for at least 15 minutes. We picked “Old Woman Cutting Her Nails” by someone who isn’t Rembrandt. It was wild to feel how rusty my attention is—and to see how applying it still drives wonder.

“Old Woman Cutting Her Nails” in the style of Rembrandt.

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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I have escalated my aversion to Spotify.

A iPod video in an Altec Lansing inMotion iPod speaker dock. Both items are working despite being 20 years old.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

1. I'm working on EPITAB: a browser extension that helps you memorize poems. If you add poems to your browser, it quizzes you on lines each time you open a new tab. Here, for example, after I opened a new window in Firefox, it's asking me for the line "The season's ill—" I have an ask though...

A screenshot of EPITAB, which shows the poem "Skunk Hour" by Robert Lowell.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I’ve been practicing again. Here’s a sarabande from one of the perfect Bach cello suites played imperfectly on the recorder. (Also pictured: my 3D-printed recorder gun rack.)

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I blogged again: this-republic-of-letters.fly.dev/posts/5/toge.... This time, on the many uses and abuses of poor Walter Ong.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

1. In the aughts and early teens, I'd fire up Google Reader and check my blogs—and maybe even write one. Pardon the earnest-posting (-maxing?), but it was often the highlight of my day. And, well, I'm blogging again: this-republic-of-letters.fly.dev/posts/3/we-s....

A screenshot of my blog, THIS REPUBLIC OF LETTERS, displaying the first post: "We should check our emails; they shouldn't check us."

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

The birds are in motion today.

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

millennial: iykyk plato: NOT SO FAST

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

My six-year-old daughter is in her Lion King moment, and I'm meme-ing through it.

A triptych of: (1) Mufasa scattering the hyenas—"what's a mob to a king?"; (2) Simba looking up at Mufasa in the sky—"what's a king to a god?"; (3) Timon and Pumbaa—"what's a god to a non-believer, who don't believe in anything?".

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Jessica Ritchey @jmritchey.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Oh, every one is always nostalgic for the geocites era web but when somebody actually makes a platform that crashes every 10 minutes, suddenly everybody wants future technology, I see how it is.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

A little post from my social media neetwork/web-based performance piece, HOMER at internaut.club

A screenshot of two posts, one says "How it works?" The other says "AI ruins posts."

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

It's Seamus Heaney's birthday! In 2019, I wrote on his last text, "Noli timere." Now, the page is so dark-patterned that I can't read it. My book, THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU—out in Sept—came from it. Article: www.fastcompany.com/90311664/wha... Book: herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

A screenshot of an article from Fast Company about Seamus Heaney.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I set up a Raspberry Pi with a webcam and pointed it at my bird feeder, and I have a local ML model tell me if there's a bird every 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure this one is GLARING at my set up.

A bird sitting on a feeder, looking directly at the camera.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Whenever you open a new tab, wouldn't it be nice—before you make your way to some fresh patch of internet—to practice memorizing a poem? Enter EPITAB! With it, you can add poems to your library, check off lines once you've got them down cold, and drill with "flashcards." github.com/jswest/epitab

A screenshot of EPITAB, showing "Bridge Poem," by John Ashbery:

> And now I cannot remember how I would have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place. The place, of movement and an order. The place of old order. But the tail end of the movement is new. Driving us to say what we are thinking. It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand and think of going no further. And it is good when you get to no further. It is like a reason that picks you up and places you where you always wanted to be. This far, it is fair to be crossing, to have crossed. Then there is no promise in the other. Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence, small panacea and lucky for us. And then it got very cool.

A screenshot of EPITAB, showing a flashcard of a selection from "Bridge Poem," by John Ashbery.

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ProPublica Guild @propublicaguild.org · 08/04/2026

We’re raising our voices for a fair contract. 🎤 Join us in solidarity in our fight for layoff protections, AI guardrails and a clear disciplinary process: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

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Swapna Krishna @swapnakrishna.com · 07/04/2026

Earthset from Artemis II. I am overcome.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

1. Easter is both completely bizarre and totally quotidian. A divine son dies gruesomely, only to emerge from the tomb to pass along a radical message. I look out my window at the green blades of grass rising, the pink buds announcing themselves: resurrection blooms everywhere your eyes land.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

As the pandemic dragged on, I (a little self-consciously) turned to the Psalms. Since I was raising a baby, each one seemed to say something about that completely quotidian miracle when we make families out of only feelings and time. I'm pumped to say that turned into THE PSALMIST, out in January.

An announcement in Publishers Marketplace that John West sold a book, THE PSALMIST.

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

From the index for my book THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU (out in Sept. 10). Here are some accidental poems: globalization Glück, Louise God G/O Media control of fragility of function of as human as magic as transporter Macbeth machine learning maggots

A screenshot of an index reading:

globalization, 149
Glück, Louise, 115
God, 89
G/O Media, 31, 45

A screenshot of the index reading, in part:

internet. See also specific elements control of, 35
as finite, 10-11 fragility of, 4
function of, 108-9
as human, 35
library metaphor for, 22-23
as Library of Alexandria, 36-37
as magic, 81-84
physicality of, 83, 91 as transporter, 57-58

A screenshot of the index, reading:

Macbeth (Shakespeare), 100
machine learning, 18. See also artificial intelligence (AI); large
language models
maggots, 59-60
malleability, 29-30
Marisopa Battalion, 62
Marx, Karl, 163
masking, 123-24
mass media. conspiracy theories and, 128

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Jon Bois @jonbois.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

hello 👋 i have developed a new tool called blüuümpíi. blüuümpíi will convert every file on your hard drive to a .wav file without asking you, maximize your system volume, and play them on every bluetooth speaker you have ever connected to. if you offer feedback on blüuümpíi i will take legal action

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Brian Whitton @noslouch.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

it's a wonderful thing when a friend does something amazing. @johnwest.bsky.social looks deeply at link rot and what it means for our lives and times. there's beauty in these words! buy it! herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

herebelowbooks.com

Product – Here Below

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things. Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human." herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.

Just one more byte

It’s possible that to store is entirely the wrong verb. Maybe it ought
to be to attend, to give our digital lives the same attention we are
called to give our physical ones. Attention, as a noun, comes to
us through Latin and French, and, from those languages, carries
the sense of to stretch toward, as though my brain, pinned behind
my skull, might reach out, feel the tight restriction of muscle as
it grasps at the world. But, by and large, attention words point in-
ward, not out. We attract it and call it. We can gather it like wheat
in a field or draw it up like water from a well. Always, though,
attention moves from the world into us—except when it’s to be
minted and spent. “Pay attention,” we say, as though it is a com-
modity, bought, sold, and traded by brokers.

The digital world both beleaguers and demands our attention.
The quality of our focus and the metaphors we surround it with
have diminished even as we’re asked to spend more of it. I’ve felt
it, lately, in the very medium of the book, which rests ever more
uneasily in my hands, though I’ve published two, including this
one. I’ve read, I would guess, a couple thousand books in my life.
It’s harder now, harder than ever. And as it’s grown harder, it’s
grown more meaningful, those acts of attentional resistance, as
straightforward as reading a book for pleasure—a refutation of
market logic, a proletarian revolution in even the word attention,
not something I pay for and sell on an open market but, instead,
something I stretch toward.

“Whole strata of reality are lost to us at the speed at which
we live, our ability to perceive them is lost,” Garth Greenwell
writes in his novel Small Rain, “and maybe that’s the value of
poetry, there are aspects of the world that are only visible at the
frequency of certain poems.” Greenwell advances an argument
best advanced in literature, in fiction or poetry, buttressed as it is
by the logic of allusion. This logic stands in stark contrast to the
totalizing, seductive logic of instrumentalism, which would have
us see everything, every act and artifact, as for something else.
Reading under instrumentalism is pointless at worst and a form
of self- betterment at best—merely a way to refill the coffers of
attention before spending it again. Greenwell argues for poetry,
for reading, for all those many varied noninstrumental activities
that demand this “unmixed attention,” to use the philosopher
Simone Weil’s language, which are a species of prayer. I mean
this in the same way Weil does—in the best and truest sense of
the word: prayer not as an attempt to change the world, but as a
chance to attune ourselves to a greater will, one that asks of us,
Be more human.

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Maxwell Neely-Cohen @maxy.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Issue Five of The HTML Review is here! Get to your browser for 15 excellent new pieces of web-based literature and art thehtml.review/05/

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John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

An absolute treat to see @elan.place's perfect newsletter ESCAPE THE ALGORITHM yesterday: escapethealgorithm.substack.com/p/the-studen.... And I"m not just saying that because he linked to Homer, my performance art masquerading as a social media app: internaut.club.

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

The Student AI Trap

Prompt if you're damned, do if you don't

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