The Year ‘The Stream’ Crested ⇥ theatlantic.com

Alexis Madrigal, the Atlantic:

The great irony is that we got what we wanted from the stream: a way to read and watch outside the editorial control of editors, old Yahoo-style cataloging, and Google bots. But when the order of the media cosmos was annihilated, freedom did not rush into the vacuum, but an emergent order with its own logic. We discovered that the stream introduced its own kinds of compulsions and controls. Faster! More! Faster! More! Faster! More!

And now, who can keep up? There is a melancholy to the infinite scroll.

An absolutely wonderful piece from Madrigal.