The Internet Is Rotting An Essay by Jonathan Zittrain www.theatlantic.com Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. Links work seamlessly until they don’t. And as tangible counterparts to online work fade, these gaps represent actual holes in humanity’s knowledge— they represent a comprehensive breakdown in the chain of custody for facts. The web in decay is the web by design wwwhypermediadecayknowledge
Holistic and prescriptive technologies Holistic technologies are normally associated with the notion of craft. Artisans, be they potters, weavers, metal-smiths, or cooks, control the process of their own work from beginning to finish. Using holistic technologies does not mean that people do not work together, but the way in which they work together leaves the individual worker in control of a particular process of creating or doing something. The opposite is specialization by process; this I call prescriptive technology. Here, the making or doing of something is broken down into clearly identifiable steps. Each step is carried out by a separate worker, or group or workers, who need to be familiar only with the skills of performing that one step. This is what is normally meant by "division of labor". Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology That which requires caring craftprocessmaking