Against the Dark Forest

The public social internet is worth designing and governing in a way that demonstrates less than total amnesia about the history of human civilizations and the ways we’ve learned to be together without killing each other. For people with the ability and willingness to work on network problems, the real choice isn't between staying on the wasteland surfaces of the internet and going underground, but between making safer and better places for human sociability and not doing that.

Unfortunately, the business of building systems for civilization is as complicated and as intrinsically political online as it is offline. If retreat seems easier, that’s because it is. But here we are.

• Erin Kissane