Here’s a big promise: A new Kickstarter campaign aims to usher in the “return of the human internet.”
That’s the tagline of a crowdfunding campaign for The Phoenix Project, an initiative from the online culture and commentary magazine Flaming Hydra. If you back The Phoenix Project, you’re supporting three things — a one-off print magazine designed to celebrate “the values and fun of the early internet,” a new e-book service for libraries, and a newsletter subscription/archiving program that’s also designed for libraries.
To Flaming Hydra’s lead editor Maria Bustillos, these disparate projects are “basically all one thing,” tied together by the goal of “protecting freedom of information” and fulfilling the “promise of the early internet, where you’re making information available to as many people as possible, while still protecting the right of artists and authors to make a living.”
Bustillos told me that these issues have been highlighted on Flaming Hydra itself, for example when Tal Levin wrote about finding countless AI-generated clones of his book on Amazon. By “creating an ecosystem that is based in people working together, who are offering their stuff in a context that is controlled and doesn’t allow” others to create and sell AI-generated clones, Bustillos said Flaming Hydra is “part of the human project.”
