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“A persona is a portal we are not aware of passing through,” my beloved editor Dan Frank wrote in an unpublished poem shortly before the insentient atoms that composed him, this singular and unrepeatable person, disbanded to return to the universe. And yet despite everything we know about what happens to those atoms when we die, the question of how they cohered into a person — the question of what makes a person, of how the myriad personae within constellate the total personality that moves through the world — is still mired in mystery. It is perhaps the greatest mystery of being alive.

These are the questions that animated the English poet and philosopher Richard Lewis Nettleship (December 17, 1846–August 25, 1892), who believed that “the individuality of anything is an ultimate fact, behind which we cannot go,” but through which we must look in order to understand the sum total of human experience.

Personality, Nettleship cautioned an epoch before pop psychology flooded us with platitudes and simplistic personality type tests, “is probably the hardest of all subjects, and yet it is one upon which we are all ready to pronounce in the most easy-going way” — pronouncements “extraordinarily vague, confused, or inadequate” to the task of fathoming the dimensions of a person. He writes:

We generally assume [the personality] to be a definite, self-contained, unchanging thing, round and about which all sorts of more or less separable and changing appendages confusedly float.

Or it is something “inward,” the most inward of all things, that to which we think we should come if we stripped off all the coats of circumstances, custom, education.

But we soon realize, on thinking, that there is no circle to be drawn round any one, within which all is “personal,” and without which all is “impersonal.” We realize what may be called the continuity of things. What, for instance, is a triangle? A space bounded by three straight lines. Where does “it” stop ? At the lines, of course. But these lines are merely its contact with surrounding space, and the “personality” of the triangle is one thing if the surrounding space be limited to the page of a book, another thing if it be extended to the room where the book is, another thing if it be carried on to include the solar system, and so on. And though for particular purposes it is necessary to define the triangle in particular ways, it is, strictly speaking, quite true that it is continuously one with the spatial universe.

A recognition of this continuity undermines the commonsense definition of a person as “a body occupying a certain place, keeping out and otherwise acting on other bodies.” Nettleship writes:

Everybody is “continuous” with a good deal more than (say) the space six feet round him and the time an hour on each side of him. The simplest memories, hopes, associations, imaginations, inferences, are extensions of personality far greater than we can easily realize. Every “here” and every “now” is the centre of practically innumerable “theres” and “thens,” and the centres are absolutely inseparable from their circumferences.

Loss, separation, death, is failure of continuity. A being which was (so to say) always closing up with everything would change but would not die.

This, too, is why abandonment — the sudden rupture of continuity in a relationship of trust — is one of the most physiologically and psychologically devastating experiences a human being can have, for we love with everything we are. Perhaps the most psychologically complex human experience, love harmonizes the cacophony of parts we live with into a total experience. Its loss, its failure of continuity, therefore discomposes the total self — a stark reminder that we can never fully compartmentalize ourselves. Nettleship considers this fragmentary but indivisible totality:

The self, I, personality, or whatever we like to call that which experiences things, is one in all that it experiences: one in seeing, hearing, smelling, and in every modification of these, one in every combination of these, and in all more complex experiences as well; it is this oneness which makes the unanalyzable self-hood of any and every experience. On the other hand, the self in all its experience is one of or in many, an experience of distinctness in innumerable senses. In a word, it is always and everywhere a whole of parts, a combining and dividing activity, able to detach any part from any other part, and yet to be in them all.

This paradox of parts parallels the nature of reality itself — to surrender to it is to contact, as physicist David Bohm observed in investigating the implicate order of the universe, “a deeper reality in which what prevails is unbroken wholeness.” The self then becomes a portal for passing through to something else, something larger and truer. A generation before Iris Murdoch observed that the triumph of the personality is the act of unselfing, Nettleship writes:

The times when one feels one is most truly oneself are just those in which one feels that the consciousness of one’s own individuality is most absolutely swallowed up, whether in sym­pathy with nature or in the bringing to birth of truth, or in enthusiasm for other men. Thus, the secret of life is self-giving.

And so we arrive at the two great instruments of unselfing — death, the pinnacle of continuity that returns our borrowed stardust to the universe; and love, which is at bottom “the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” Not long before he died of exposure while attempting a climb of Mont Blanc, Nettleship observes:

Death is self-surrender… Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender.

donating = loving

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation. Your support makes all the difference.

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Another quick one…

This is a shot from our friend’s holiday party last night. Just got this sweater a few weeks ago when I was at Costco. Picked it up entirely on a whim as I passed by the clothes on the way to the bakery section and saw a batch of “Christmas Sweaters” for $10 after instant rebate and thought to myself i’d be nice to have another Christmas sweater to wear to friend’s holiday parties like this one since I don’t otherwise have anything that “christmasy” (except for the The Norwegian).

It’s cheap but served the desired purpose.

The cold wind blew in from the north a few days later. I met up with E after dinner and we shivered and squealed while walking between stores of the little strip mall. He brought me a little keychain from Tokyo and treated me to fish cake soup and an Icedream cone after dinner. Even though I don’t see him nearly as much as I used to, I feel closer to him now, probably because he experienced heartbreak for the first time this year. By his own admission it’s changed him — cracked open his shell, undone years of repressing emotions, which has made it easier for me to get through to him. I never like to watch my friends hurt but I’m grateful that going through similar things can bring us closer. Breakups are the most intimate thing I know: you rarely get to see someone more vulnerable than when they are breaking up with you or being broken up with. I think this vulnerability bleeds into your friendships too. When heartbreak brings you to your knees, your friends see that inner child of yours thrust into the cold, and if they are your true friends, they will take care of that child and love you more for it.

E says he’s planning on hopping back on “the apps” in the new year, which would leave me as the only member of our friend group not either coupled up or actively looking to be. My reasons for not swiping are many — I doubt these companies have our best interests in mind, I don’t think I would enjoy it nor do I think anything good would come of it, and I harbor a personal deep-seated aversion to looking for love, rather than letting it catch me unawares — but strong as my opposition may be it cannot keep me from wondering if one day I will regret not taking a more proactive approach. Who knows, maybe I will, but for now I still consider it a blessing that I at least don’t yearn for a partner like some of my other unpartnered friends. Strangely enough, even as I recognize how much fuller life feels in love, I don’t feel that I am missing anything now.

We celebrated early Christmas at a family friend’s house, one of whom surprised me with a nice beanie. I thanked them profusely for it because I love beanies and what a sweet idea! but my heart broke a little as I tried unsuccessfully to stretch it over my Extra Large noggin. What hurts me is not the fact that I didn’t get something I wanted, but that someone went out of their way to get me something I couldn’t appreciate or use. Learning to gracefully accept gifts I can’t use or appreciate in spite of that guilt is one of those adult skills that will take me a lifetime to learn.

please, sir…. i have a family. let me eat my cookie in peace

 

I recently wrote about the future of the browser and Surf, a new app from the creators of Flipboard. Both stories explore the changing nature of the web and its impact on the media landscape. I’m not shy about expressing my frustrations with the establishment media and the ever-present gulf between technology and old media companies. I’ve been involved with the internet and online publishing from the very beginning — even before many big media companies embraced it. Those companies have almost always lagged behind in understanding the shifting reality of what media is, how we consume it, and how it’s distributed.

The widespread lack of understanding among the establishment media allowed Google to become a behemoth. And then they essentially handed the keys to the kingdom to Mark Zuckerberg and Co. They are making the same mistake with the new AI platforms. Despite all the brouhaha about fighting Perplexity or OpenAI, it will amount to nothing more than a short-term squeeze play.

Some media companies are simply signing deals, taking the cash while they can. By doing deals with these platforms and giving them access to their content, most publications might feel they will be rewarded with traffic to their websites. Here’s what Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, said on a podcast:

We can go through it in complex way or the simple way. The simple way is we believe it provides revenue, but more importantly provides a potential traffic source. Provides an avenue for a product partnership that could be very beneficial, and that provides a way for us to help shape the future of AI…

…[Another] part is this very interesting search element, where right now in OpenAI they have browse mode and they can link out to Atlantic stories. They have said that they’re going to build a search product. They have not launched the search product, but they have said they would build it. We have allowed them to include The Atlantic in their search product.

Our view is that if this becomes an important way that people navigate the internet, that it will be better for us to be in it than to not be in it, and also to help shape it than not help shape it.

The Atlantic and its brethren have about as much chance of shaping the future as I do of convincing Elon Musk to focus on playing cricket. The challenge for these publications is more existential.

Unlike search engines, AI platforms are built on precision and summaries. They’re unlikely to be a major source of traffic or advertising revenue. What about getting paid for the summaries OpenAI serves in response to prompts? These prompts will vary widely, as will the responses, breaking the traditional mass-media revenue model. As I explained in my “future of browser” article, information itself is being atomized, which will likely upend the web and media as we know them.

Facebook made big promises to media companies, only to pull the rug from under them. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity are likely to be equally, if not more, ruthless. These platforms won’t need the media for long.

The old media has consistently misunderstood digital transformation, and it’s no surprise that we have a media ecosystem still trapped in old monetization models, where “interruptions” have only grown more aggressive. What began as occasional magazine ads has evolved into a constant barrage across all platforms—from billboard-cluttered webpages to podcast sponsorship breaks and algorithmic social feeds designed for ad delivery.

Social media platforms, built around algorithmic feeds and advertising models, have reduced content discovery to a game of clicks, likes, and engagements. Mass-market media has followed suit, optimizing for sensationalism rather than depth. All of it, from podcasts to news apps, interrupts users constantly with ads, pushing all of us to exhaustion.

In reality, the seeds of media’s destruction are built into its architecture, because outlets must feed advertising systems, not the audience. The media establishment disregards why audiences visit them, and it’s no surprise the system has reached its limits. Too many advertisements, too many interruptions, and too much “content” mean that, as an end customer, you are decoupled from media brands.

Nowhere was this more obvious than during the recent election cycle. The news cycle showed that information consumers were ready to move on from tired old content creation, delivery, and distribution models. Who wants to deal with 500 versions of a 500-word article with a sizzling headline and a sliver of actual news? Try sitting through 10 minutes of CNN or any cable show. Screaming, shouting, and superficiality make it easy to tune out traditional media.

It’s hardly surprising people want 60-second summaries on TikTok and headlines on Twitter. A recent Pew Research study found that “about one-in-five Americans – including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) – say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.” While social media is known for hot takes and memes, it’s much more than that, as Pew’s study revealed. “Overwhelming majorities say they get all four types of content asked about in the survey: basic facts (90%), opinions (87%), funny posts (87%), and breaking news (83%),” the survey noted.

OpenAI and Claude are demonstrating that we’re entering a phase where individuals will engage with platforms as a singular individual entity. Even if these platforms adopt advertising, each query will generate a unique response, making it difficult to replicate traditional mass media monetization. This represents the newest variation of the game played by Google and Facebook.

Google and Facebook are already showing that by embedding “Ask AI” and “Summaries” into their products, they are ready to produce one-to-one advertising using “Generative AI.” They won’t need to send people anywhere, much like OpenAI or whoever triumphs as a big winner in the AI sweepstakes.

The internet was originally envisioned as a place for connection, collaboration, and discovery. But over time, it has been distorted by business models that prioritize engagement metrics over meaningful interaction. Discovery has long been the open web’s greatest challenge, with search engines turning it into an SEO game and social platforms creating algorithmic echo chambers. AI platforms are making discovery almost irrelevant.

You stay still, but your AI agent goes out and fetches, distills, and synthesizes the content and renders it in whatever format you want — audio, video, or text. This is the future. None of the media business models will work in the future — neither advertising nor paywalls. Today’s content deals, like the one The Atlantic signed with OpenAI, are akin to the sugar high you get from soda. The sugar high is followed by the inevitable crash.

December 21, 2024 San Francisco

Addendum: The Washington Post is drama central these days. The paper is trying to come up with a new growth strategy. And there is a new (editor in) chief in town. Furthermore, some believe they can save the paper if they can buy it from Jeff Bezos. I wish all of them good luck in all those endeavors. After all, trying is better than doing nothing. The media industry is in a dire situation. It is time to reinvent. and it starts by rethinking the meaning of media in the age of “AI” and then we need to figure out how to make it work financially.