John West is a writer and technologist. He reports the news with code at the Wall Street Journal, where his work has received multiple awards, including two Pulitzer prizes. The Boston Globe called his first book, Lessons and Carols, “lyrical and crystalline.” He is also the author of The Internet Will Die, and So Will You, a digital memento mori. His first novel, The Psalmist, is expected in January, 2027. He holds an M.F.A. in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College. He lives outside Kingston, New York, with his partner, children, and unruly cat.
John West is a writer and technologist. He reports the news with code at the Wall Street Journal, where his work has received multiple awards, including two Pulitzer prizes. The Boston Globe called his first book, Lessons and Carols, “lyrical and crystalline.” He is also the author of The Internet Will Die, and So Will You, a digital memento mori. His first novel, The Psalmist, is expected in January, 2027. He holds an M.F.A. in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College. He lives outside Kingston, New York, with his partner, children, and unruly cat.
In Episode 493 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with computational journalist and author John West about the surprising impermanence of the Internet, the shift from human agency to platform agency, the business models that have reshaped the web, how AI could further remake our relationship to the Internet and to ourselves, and what the collapse of a shared reality means for our politics and our humanity.
The conversation begins with the paradox at the heart of West’s book, The Internet Will Die and So Will You. The web we’ve been told is permanent and indelible is in fact a deeply ephemeral place, subject to decay and disappearance in much the same way our own bodies are. Demetri and West trace the story back to the Internet’s early years—a world of personal homepages and open standards like RSS—and to the phenomenon of link rot that first drew West to write about the web’s impermanence, before opening onto the book’s larger preoccupation with the shift from human agency to platform agency, the mechanistic logic embedded in the platforms that mediate our lives, and what it means to live deliberately in an environment engineered to keep us perpetually satiated and unconscious.
From there they turn to the business models that have reshaped the web—the move from serving users to serving advertisers—and how AI’s implementation into more and more facets of our lives could change that relationship for better or worse. They close on questions of truth, knowledge production, and epistemic collapse, asking how the world would have handled 9/11 in the modern media ecosystem, why people cannot live in a perpetual state of uncertainty, and what the collapse of a shared reality means for our politics and our humanity.
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John West is a writer and technologist. He reports the news with code at the Wall Street Journal, where his work has received multiple awards, including two Pulitzer prizes. The Boston Globe called his first book, Lessons and Carols, “lyrical and crystalline.” He is also the author of The Internet Will Die, and So Will You, a digital memento mori. His first novel, The Psalmist, is expected in January, 2027. He holds an M.F.A. in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College. He lives outside Kingston, New York, with his partner, children, and unruly cat.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
