Encounter Studio: experiments + journeys

nostalgic pleasures #4

2024-11-11T04:13:22Z

The previous post entitled Nostalgic Pleasures #3 gives the background to my experiment in a minor key using 35mm expired Fuji Velvia 50 film and a 1960's Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR. The picture below was made whilst wandering in the area around Bunjils Cave adjacent to the Grampians (Gariwerd) in Victoria in the late afternoon of spring.

The photography that day was chance encounters in a rugged, harsh and messy landscape, which had a history of being burnt from bushfires and with a probable future of becoming warmer and drier: increasing dryness with more hotter days (greater than 35°C) whilst the spells of warmer temperatures will last longer. The climate models indicate that the temperatures will increase by 1.9°C----2.5°C by around mid-century.

nostalgic pleasures #3

2024-09-17T11:50:28Z

The picture below is a second example of using expired Fuji Velvia 50 with a Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR and a Zeiss Pro-Tessar 35mm f3.2 lens. The film was processed in E-6 chemistry at an Adelaide lab, then scanned by me using an Epson V850 Pro flatbed scanner with Silverfast software. The digital file was post-processed in Adobe's Lightroom This analogue/digital combination makes it a hybrid.

(Pitkin Rd, Waitpinga, 2024)

The picture was made in the late afternoon during the winter months whilst on a poodlewalk with Maleko and it is a part of the low key Roadside project, which is a work-in-process. Pitkin Rd is a no through local road in Waitpinga, in the souther Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia and it leads to several small hobby (life style) farms.

light #7

2024-09-04T03:17:58Z

The photo was made just after sunrise during the recent, intense stormy conditions on the weekend in the last week of winter. It was Sunday morning and I sat on a rock at the top of Rosetta Head looking over Encounter Bay waiting for the clouds to cover the early morning sun.

The north westerly wind on the weekend was gale force. It was gusting around 80-125 kph and the temperatures were 10-15 degrees above normal in South Australia. The wild winds caused a lot of damage in Victoria and extensive flooding along the Derwent River in Tasmania. The latter had been in drought during the autumn and winter of 2024. It appears that the weather is becoming increasingly volatile and turning quickly from one extreme to another.

Nostalgic pleasure #2

2024-08-25T01:59:15Z

The photo below is another one from my little experiment in nostalgic pleasures: ie., using expired 35mm Fuji Velvia 50 film exposed at 20 ASA, handholding a reconditioned 1960s Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter, a 35mm f.3.2 Zeiss Pro-Tessar lens, and having the film processed with E-6 chemistry in Adelaide.

Nostalgic pleasure in this case is pre-digital analogue technology that was disrupted by digital technology in the early 21st century. The digital camera industry collapsed between 2010-2012 due to the emergence of the smartphone killing off the entry-level camera market ( point-and-shoot cameras) which shrunk nearly to nonexistence.

The photo is a cloud study at Waitpinga in the late afternoon during the winter months:

On this occasion I continued making several cloud studies as the storm clouds rolled in from the south-west, the light was fading and dusk was falling. The photos that work the best are those with colour whilst the starker light/black ones made as the light faded were flat and dull. That minor experiment highlights how Velvia 50 needs vivid colour (color saturation and vibrancy) for it to come into its own.

I've put a couple more photos on Flickr.

Nostalgic pleasure #1

2024-08-17T07:12:32Z

According to those who're paid to have their finger on the pulse of the Zeitgeist there is a trend emerging in western culture of people returning to using analogue point and shoot cameras and film. The reasons given for this step back from digital vary: nostalgia for grainy film quality, full of charm and imperfections; mental health in that film helps them slow down (mindfulness); and more trust in photographs taken with a film camera more than a digital photo. with its increasing incorporation of AI.

Eliza Williams, the editor of Creative Review, says that people ( ie., gen Z ) "are looking for some release from the pressures of daily life and the addictive qualities of screens, cameras and taking photographs offers a sense of nostalgic pleasure, which feels wholesome and arty while also making you look cool”.

This is my recent embrace of nostalgic pleasure:

The details are: walking along Halls Creek Rd, Waitpinga on a late afternoon in winter, expired Fuji Velvia 50 film exposed at 20 ASA, a hand held Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex Super SLR with its inbuilt light meter from the 1960s, and film processed in E-6 chemistry by a lab. The process involves a detachment of the process of taking a photo and the actual photo itself.

Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park: archives

2024-07-26T05:49:08Z

These three photos were made whilst on a photowalk in the Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park with Adam and Michael Duttkiewicz and a couple of their friends at the time. This would have been a decade or more ago. It would have been around the time when I was still living in the city, re-learning to photograph in black and white, and experimenting in seeing in b+w.

I have not looked at these files for a decade or more, as the quality of some of these b+w negatives was poor. I was embarrassed as they were underexposed, overdeveloped, and clumsily composed.

The scanning by the lab was done for the appearance of digital and not for analogue -- it was over-sharp. The software that I had at the time (an early version of Lightroom, if I recall ) was basic, and I couldn't do much editing the scanned files. I did go and buy my own scanner as I wanted the softer appearance/presence of film.

I didn't bother to go through these archival files to see what is actually there. I dismissed them and forgot about these archives. Until now.

stepping back into photographic history (1960s)

2024-05-31T03:03:01Z

I mentioned my brief experiment using a roll of expired film --- Fuji Velvia 50 transparency--- here on the Leica poetics blog. Though the results were pretty ordinary, if not largely disappointing, I've decided to continue with the expired film experiment.

I've been gifted with more expired Velvia 50 in both 35mm and 120 formats. I had hoped to use the Rolleifex 6006 for the 120 film, but it is not working, despite a newly packed battery. The electronics are the problem by all accounts, and it needs to go overseas to be repaired as nobody in Australia is willing to, or capable of repairing it. That's expensive, so I will continue the experiment in the short term with the expired 35mm Velvia 50.

I recently acquired, courtesy of Brett Rogers in Moleswoth, Tasmania, a Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super SLR camera with a standard 50mm Tessar lens, leaf shutter and coupled selenium light meter, along with filters, lenshood and a camera bag plus the loan of 35mm and 85mm lenses to use with the 35mm Velvia 50. The Zeiss Ikon Contaflex SLR, which was manufactured by Zeiss-Ikon AG in Stuttgart, West Germany between the years 1959 and 1962, is what's known as a vintage camera. Mike Eckman has a very informative account of the post war history of both the Contaflex and the Zeiss-Ikon company. Zeiss today is a high end lens manufacturer.

This history indicates that I have stepped back into the subculture of collectors and vintage cameras with its nostalgia, archives, museum and memories --- often to the extent of living off its remembered inheritance and history. It is a step back into past times so as to use a quality vintage, mechanical camera in the present with expired film. This requires that you have access to skilled technicians, like Brett Rogers, who have the knowledge and expertise to repair these antique cameras, restore them back to life, then to look after and service them with tender loving care.

So the experiment will start with the expired 35mm Velvia 50 and the old world Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex SLR. This will be take a while to kickstart as the Contaflex is yet to arrive, the film needs to be exposed, then developed by a lab and scanned by me. I'll post the images on this blog, even though it lacks a photo gallery facility or plugin.

The two photos on this post are from the original roll of expired Velvia 50 that were made with a Leica M4-P rangefinder. Looking at them I can see that the film needs to be rated at 32 instead of 50 ASA so as to increase the shadow detail. They provide a starting point. The photos in the next post will be those made with the Contaflex.

dream images

2024-05-19T00:53:05Z

An experiment using double exposure to layer the photo and to make the ordinary seem a bit strange through imperfections.

Strange in the sense of a memory image or a melancholic dream image.

edgelands #3: landfill

2024-05-08T00:30:59Z

I have an ongoing photographic interest in edgelands. Edgelands are usually understood as the banal hinterlands that exists between urban and rural environments, and they disrupt and challenge the common notion of beauty in the landscape.

The picture below is a recent (2024) attempt at an interpretation of edgelands in Waitpinga. This earlier attempt (in 2022) was centred around the early morning light and it adopts a pictureesque approach. The more recent interpretation below is bleaker.

The more recent interpretation builds on earlier work here (in 2020) and here (in 2019). It is the bleak interpretation that is more fitting to this particular edgeland, rather than the earlier picturesque approach. It fits with the aesthetic experience of being in (walking in) a degraded landscape.They are very modest compared to the work of Naoya Hatekeyama.

light #6

2024-02-21T01:47:02Z

The image below is a continuation of the little experiment that I'd started a couple of years ago to try and photograph light itself. Light is the subject.

This is late afternoon light in the Redwoods near Beech Forest in the Otways in Victoria in March 2024. I was concerned with the intensity of the light.

I experimented whilst walking amongst the Californian Redwoods that afternoon, but I wasn't really happy with the results of light falling on the trunks of the Redwoods. I needed to de-literalized’ the images much more.

seascape #4: fog

2024-01-12T00:21:54Z

I've started experimenting with digital black and white whilst making some seascapse with the 5x4 Linof Technika IV and colour sheet film. The weather condition chosen was the mist and fog hanging around Encounter Bay on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula over the Xmas/New Year period (2023-24).

I've never had much success with digital black and white conversions from a colour digital file using the Sony A7 R111--- the results have always been disappointing, as the images have looked bland and muddy. The recent seascapes and fog offered me an opportunity to experiment to see if I could create something better. The above 'behind the camera' image is an example of this experiment.

returning to Copeville

2023-08-21T02:39:23Z

Now that Suzanne's broken fibula is healing and she is able to walk one of standard poodles I am able to start to plan a photo trip to the Murray Mallee in South Australia. I will take Maleko with me.

I plan to pick up where I left off prior to the Covid pandemic, which was in 2019. This was the Claypans and the nearby Copeville and Galga area that were on the old Waikerie railway line, which was a branch line from Karoonda. The railway was constructed around 1914 and was closed in the 1990s.

I will start by returning to this site and this photo:

It will be a large format photo trip and my initial camp will be in the quarry near Copeville, as it was on the previous trip. Things have changed in the meantime. The Copeville silo was painted by Jarrod Loxton in 2022 as part of the South Australia silo art trail.

seascape #3

2023-05-12T08:16:13Z

The picture below (from early January 2023) comes from my decision to explore and experiment with a different approach to the seascape project that I have been engaged in over the last year. I am finding it an intriguing project.

The exploration involved searching for different locations from the Rosetta Head one that I had previously been using. What I was looking for was a site that would enable me to get closer to the sea , as well as provide protection from any surging rogue waves. I was wary as I'd been previously caught with expensive consequences for the photography gear.

Spring Mount Conservation Park: on location

2023-03-29T00:57:13Z

Last Sunday (26th March) was overcast and raining. These are good conditions for returning to the Spring Mount Conservation Park in the southern part of the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia to make some large format photographs of the bushland. I did return, and my objective was to photograph the bushland in black and white. I have learned that monochrome works better representing this old growth stringy bark bushland than colour film.

The photo making needed to be after the rain had eased and before the cloud cover cleared and the sun came out. The location chosen was along Strangeways Rd, which I had identified the day before whilst I was on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. There was no low cloud or mist between the trees that morning but it was gloomy -- suitably so - and, luckily, there was little wind.

I had about 45 minutes to an hour in the mid-morning to use the 5x4 Sinar F1 view camera. I was able to make 2 exposures before the sun came out and changed the atmosphere.

Like the Gitzo tripod I was using, the entry level, Sinar is around 50 years old, as it was probably made sometime in the 1970s. It is a lightweight, modular, view camera and very easy to use in the field; or either the right angle viewer or the binocular reflex magnifier on the back of the camera. I don't have either of the latter. I just use a simple dark cloth, which is a hassle to use when the wind is blowing. I didn't have time to put the Sinar pan tilt/head on the tripod.

light #5

2023-01-07T23:49:47Z

Continuing the light series/project. This is Light #3 for contrast.

The photo was made on a spring morning in October 2022 looking across Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head at Victor Harbor.

There was heavy seafog that morning. These are infrequent as they only happen a couple of times during the year.

seascape #2

2023-01-01T01:39:33Z

A couple of days before, and between Xmas and New Year 2022, have been conducive for seascapes and photographing light.

An example of a seascape from Rosetta Head at Victor Habor in the early morning:

A cold front came through from the south west on the morning of the 27th after the previous day of 40 degree and hot north westerly wind. Rosetta Head is a favourite location for seascapes as I am able to find protection from the strong south westerly wind.

light #4

2022-08-20T09:12:37Z

The fourth in the series of photographing light per se which broadens the terrain beyond photojournalism, documentary and landscape.

This is looking east over Encounter Bay from the shoreline of a small beach in front of Whalers resort complex.

light #3

2022-08-05T03:25:10Z

Another image in the series of photographing light per se which broadens the terrain beyond photojournalism and documentary:

This is looking east over Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head.

The hardware upgrade has finally happened

2022-06-27T08:20:36Z

The studio hardware upgrade is nearly finished. Thank goodness.

The old Mac Pro (2009) and its cinema monitor are now sitting in the garage looking for a new home. The Mac Studio and Eizo monitor replacement have arrived, been unpacked, and are sitting on my desk in the studio. I've just started working with them. I've also upgraded to the Adobe Photography plan. I didn't want to lease the photo software but I really didn't have that much of a choice.

A picture from 2021 of a building in Pirie St made with my old Rolleiflex TLR through an open window in the Epworth building:

At this stage of the upgrade I cannot get my old Epson V700 flatbed scanner to work, even though I upgraded to the VuScan software. So all the film photos from 2022 plus many of the b+w ones from 2021 have yet to be scanned. I have been forced to order a new Epson V850 Pro scanner.

light #2

2022-06-10T10:42:17Z

This is my second attempt in my little project of photographing light per se:

On this occasion I endeavoured to simplifiy things down to the bare minimum. I'm at the western edge of Encounter Bay on Jetty Rd that runs alongside Rosetta Head in the early morning. I'm precariously balanced on some rocks at the very edge of the sea. It is early in the morning just after sunrise. The advantage of digital is its flexibility as working with a tripod and film would be much more difficult.

light #1

2022-05-13T00:36:42Z

This is my first attempt at photographing light per se that I mention in an earlier post. I took advantage of the layer of cloud softening the early morning light.

This is looking east across Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head in Victor Harbor. I did try this approach with an old film camera -- eg., a Rolleiflex TLR (colour negative) to see what happens but the film is still unprocessed.

light + photography

2022-05-09T12:51:32Z

I live on the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia and, as a result of my early morning poodlewalks along the coast, I I have become very aware of light, and especially the power and violence of light in relation to photography. My usual mode of photography is one of being anxious to minimise or avoid the blinding or excessive light that results in blown highlights. So I would normally photograph in soft or low light situations (using both analog and digital cameras) to manage the excessive and destructive light.

However, as a result of my experiences of the fluidity of light along the coast during this year I have tentatively started to explore light as the subject of photography. It is very tentative though:

The traditional interpretation of light in our western culture contrasts light with darkness, with light standing for vision, reason, knowledge, truth and the real --eg.,as exemplified in the Enlightenment movement. On this interpretation light serves as a transparent medium in which truth and the objective world are revealed. Light unveils, clarifies, illuminates and makes the world around us perceptible and knowable.

seascapes

2022-03-01T04:19:19Z

I have started to explore the possibilities of seascapes this last month or so using large format cameras -- namely, 4x5 and 5x7-- and photographng in colour.

The location from which I work is Rosetta Head (the Bluff) and the subject is Encounter Bay in the early morning around sunrise. I park the Forester in the top car park over looking Petrel Cove then walk around the northern side of the Bluff and then up the eastern face carrying the camera gear. The 5x4 and carbon tripod are no problem as they fit into a pack, but I struggle with the 5x7 Cambo and the Gitzo tripod.

It is a slow process as it is a hit and miss situation. I do not really know what the clouds, light and atmosphere will be like until I get there. All I know is that there are clouds over the sea and the direction of the wind.

the upgrade journey starts

2022-01-22T00:23:04Z

I have finally begun the necessary upgrades to my digital "darkroom" that is centred around independent content creator and work-from-home. The current set-up has served me well for the last 7 years, but it is finally reaching its use-by date. The software of the Epson V700 scanner has a flaw as it won't scan b+w negatives but I cannot upgrade it as the O/S of the Mac Pro is too old.

The upgrade is going to involve buying new computers around June 2022 when Apple release the more professionally oriented MX Macs; plus new processing software for both still photography and video. The hardware plan is that a Mac mini plus an Eizo screen will replace the old Mac Pro (2009) that I have been using for my film photography. Then I will be able to upgrade the Epson software.

The first step in the longish upgrade journey was to upgrade the operating system of the 27 inch iMac (2015 Intel) that I use for my digital still photography and to download new post- processing software. To my surprise I was still able to upgrade the macOS for the iMac from the macOS High Sierra that I had been using to the recently released macOS Monterey. (I thought that the 2015 iMac would be too old to upgrade to the latest macO/S).

My fingers are crossed as I'm hoping that the iMac has the capacity (processing power) to be able to use process the 4K videos from the recently acquired Panasonic SH1.

possibilities, photographically speaking

2022-01-14T05:13:06Z

During the last couple of months as the La Niña event with its cooler, wetter conditions has been weakening I have been regularly exploring the local Waitpinga bushland in the early morning. This is after walking with Kayla along a dusty back country road for 30 minutes or so. The explorations are all 30 minutes in duration are they are designed to get to know the bushland and to find some suitable material ---possibilities-- for a large format photo session.

This picture of some roadside vegetation, just after sunrise, was made on New Years day. After looking art it for a couple of weeks I've decided that it is a possibility worth photographing in the right light. Light is crucial here. Thankfully, it is easy to find, even though it is just as easy to walk past without noticing it --- which I have done on many an occasion, even when I have been looking out for it.

The bushland explorations have taken quite some time to uncover the photographic possibilities. The scoping sessions using a digital camera are of fragments of the bush -- a tree trunk here, a branch there, an old log on the ground there abouts. I then have to remember where these possibilities are so that I am able to find them on the next exploration. Sometimes it takes me a week or more to re-locate some of these possibilities; some because there are times when I can never find them again.

Recovered

2021-12-12T04:25:07Z

In the 1970s and 1980s a Leica M4 rangefinder with a 1970s 35mm Summicron lens was my carry around film camera. It worked extremely well and I was very comfortable wandering the streets using the camera without a light meter. Some say that this was a classic M -- the apex of the minimal analog, hand-crafted design. But it was on the cusp of fading into oblivion in the face of a newer technology of the 35mm SLR from Japan (Nikon F) from the early sixties. The latter was a steady trend which increased even more during the 1970s and 1980s.

I used the M4 extensively for the Bowden Archives and Industrial Modernity project, especially for the black and white photos in the Snapshots and Bowden sections.

I dropped the Leica M4 onto a concrete floor in the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane's South Bank in the 1990s. The rangefinder mechanism broke and it could not be repaired in Australia. The camera body was misplaced and then lost for approximately 25 years. The 35mm Summicron lens, which had sat in a cupboard was eventually used on a digital Sony NEX-7 in 2014. I bought the Sony E mount so that I could use the lens.

Then the Leica M4 body was found around 2018. Unfortunately, the rangefinder mechanism still could not be repaired in Australia as there were no second hand rangefinder mechanisms. Over the next couple of years I saved up some money and I sent the body back to Leica Camera in Wetzlar, Germany in 202 to be repaired. They put in a new rangefinder mechanism and refurbished the body. They did an excellent job --- the 1970s camera is like new.

an old MA revisited

2021-10-23T23:19:23Z

Art photography is often about journeys along winding tracks and trails, some of which lead to no where.

Sometimes these journeys are in the form of working on projects over a long period of time. Eventually an archive of photos builds up and we start to wonder what can we do with these photos over and above showing them in the the odd physical exhibition that is quickly forgotten and only exists on a CV. Often these projects are then put to one side, we forget about them, and we move onto new projects.

A classic example of this is my old MA (photos and dissertation) at Flinders University in South Australia in the late 1980s.

The general idea of the MA was to explore Romanticism's critical response to industrial capitalism and then to map this onto Australian modernity. I worked on it for 2 years, then had to put it aside (ie., dumped it) when I upgraded to do a PhD in continental philosophy at Flinders. I forgot about the MA and the photography whilst working on the PhD in the 1990s and when I moved into the paid workforce in Canberra. When I picked up photography again in the first decade of 21st century I would sometimes take photos that were within the boundaries of the industrial MA project, but I never thought about it as a project.

The MA was something best forgotten. I'd failed. I was embarrassed by the failure. I realized that it had became normal for people to do MFA's, complete them, and then teach/lecture/research photography in a university, such as RMIT. My old b+w photos just reminded me of my shame over my failure. I was now happy just making new photos like most other photographers.

One day, when I was bored, I started going through my old black and white archives. I saw a body of work sitting there, asked a few friends to look at it, and then to help me quickly draft up a dummy photobook. I showed the dummy to a few people, then put it into the background. The dummy photobook was a bunch of photos of Bowden. However, that didn't really make sense of the old MA, since the text was missing, and it was the text that I had struggled with so long ago.

explorations

2021-09-07T09:03:45Z

In a recent post on his art blog the art historian Sasha Grishin makes a useful distinction between a landscape artist and an environmental artist. Grishin is writing about an exhibition featuring the landscape work of John Wolseley, Mulkuṉ Wirrpanda and Mary Tonkin.

He says that:

"The basic distinction between a landscape artist, in the old-fashioned understanding, and an environmental artist, is that a landscape artist stands in front of something to capture, convey or depict it, while an environmental artist is part of the landscape or environment and seeks to convey it, its rhythms and patterns, from the inside."

A 2017 collaboration between Wolseley and Mulkan Wirpanda is here.

I slow walk in nature and I make photos of minutae:

The question is: how can photography explore how we dwell and move within landscape or country? How can photography relate the minutiae of the natural world -ie., shell, feather, seaweed - to the abstract dimensions of the earth's dynamic systems?

What puzzles me as I slow walk in the littoral zone on the poodlewalks and often photograph the minutiae in this coastal world is how do I relate this minutiae to the earth's dynamic systems in a photographic way?

old tripods

2021-04-12T22:56:08Z

I recently went on a field trip to Lorne and the Great Otway National Park in Victoria with the Melbourne based large format photographers. Like the previous visit, it was a short trip - we ( Suzanne, myself and the standard poodles) only spent a few days staying at an Airbnb at Aireys Inlet. Accommodation along the coast of the Great Ocean Road was extremely hard to find. It appears that everybody is travelling around Australia with the national borders closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Lorne itself was packed. There were people everywhere including at Erskine Falls.

I hit my physical limits carrying my Gitzo aluminium tripod and Linhof 5x4 Technika IV up a series of steps to Swallow Cave at the top of the Sheoak waterfall. It was the tripod that did it: -- the Gitzo is heavy and unwieldy and it hurt my neck and back when strung across my shoulders. I really struggled. It is the lightest tripod that I own, but I had to take rests to ease the strain on my neck and back.

Consequently, the next day when I walked along a forest path from the Blanket Leaf Picnic Area to the Cora Lynn Cascades and back I knew I could not carry the Gitzo aluminium tripod and Linhof 5x4 Technika IV; even though it was just a couple of kilometres on a moderate grade walk to the Cascades.

I'm just going for a walk in the forest I told myself. I'm going to enjoy myself in the Otways. To hell with lugging heavy gear. I saw this part of the creek on the way down to the Cascades. It was in a very dark corner, it was raining, and so it was a very low light situation.

I just carried a Sony A7 R111 digital camera with me. It works well handheld in low light. The Cascades themselves were nothing much so I photographed this section of the creek on the way back to the picnic ground. It was no longer raining.

beyond social media?

2021-02-05T23:44:42Z

Hamish McKenzie, in addressing the attention economy on the Substack blog, refers back to the old (pre-social media) internet and blogging. This is internet history. That was then. We now live and work in the attention economy with its environment of perpetual digital distraction where companies (eg., Facebook and Google) are targeting our attention to make money. Their business model is the monetisation of attention to passively consume through governing modes of participation within the system. Facebook's software has the capacity to produce and instantiate modes of attention as well as to track and process user data across the web. This is an infrastructure that works invisibly in the background to shape forms of sociality.

What has emerged is a techno-culture of perpetual distraction--all those pings, pop-ups, notifications that cause us to be perpetually distracted. Rather than democratising the public sphere, social media replaces it with a global Freudian id, in which everyone’s darkest impulses collide, and rational debate becomes difficult.

So we need to critically think about the role of Facebook's network of friends in our lives, how it affects our mental capacities and predicts our future interests.

So how might we critically engage?

McKenzie say that Substack, which is an independent publishing platform based on a subscription model, is a place where writers are rewarded not for doing the things that capture attention but instead for doing the things that respect readers’ trust. Substack emerged as a digital publishing platform from a frustration with:

"how the quality of discussion has been degraded on social media. We are dumber on social media than we are in real life. We are less forgiving, less willing to listen and understand, and more prone to dismiss and then torch our ideological opponents. That, after all, is how we earn internet points....the incentives that underpin today’s dominant internet media businesses have led to tribalism and groupthink ... With an ad-based business model you have to play for scale, which isn’t always conducive to good discourse. To make any meaningful money in such a model, media producers have to generate millions of ad impressions."

He says that the old internet internet felt like a less hostile place then, and there were fewer heat-seeking algorithms that sought to transmute attention into gold. Substack, as a counter force to social media he adds, frequently references that blogging era, and it seeks to recapture some of what made it special.