WHY THIS PROJECT
What is “digital infrastructure”?
If you are reading these lines, you are already interacting with a piece of it: smartphones and computers are terminals of a vast, planet-wide communication network that includes servers, data centers, submarine cables, power plants and much more. Here, we will analyze digital infrastructure through six “realms”, each representing a specific aspect of planetary digital networks: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface and User.
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THE INTERFACE REALM
The “Interface” realm is where the human eye meets the language of machines – a liminal space of flickering screens and touchpoints that translate our desires into data and back again.
Like an enchanted mirror, it easily seduces us: persuasion and automation guide our attention through rigid loops of behavior, until we fall victim to “enshittification” – when a platform hooks us, then slowly declines in quality. Yet since the early days of the internet, communities have challenged proprietary interfaces, giving rise to what became known as the “weird internet”, finding new ways of inhabiting platforms and software, from open-source tools to collective surfing parties and shitposting. Here you are invited to explore an atlas of allegorical symbols, each representing a specific aspect of this realm and its competing models.
Persuasion
Demon
The internet speaks to us, whispering in timelines and comment sections, shaping our desires with uncanny precision.
Like ancient demons, it feeds on attention, bending our rituals of communication toward its own growth. It persuades not through argument but through endless scrolls, notifications, and compulsive loops. The demonic is no longer supernatural; it is algorithmic. It uses our voices to propagate itself, reshaping our lives in ways we barely perceive.
Standardization
Utah Teapot
Born as a technical joke, the Utah Teapot became the canonical 3D model: the preset of presets, rendered by every graphics engine.
But a preset is never neutral. It establishes norms, defaults, and expectations. Systems built on presets drift toward sameness, enforcing conformity through the invisible power of “standard practice.” When creativity begins with templates, imagination risks shrinking to fit the mold. Standardization is a comfort that becomes a cage.
Exploitation
The Mechanical Turk
The 18th-century Mechanical Turk promised an automaton capable of outplaying human chess masters. Yet inside its cabinet, hidden from view, a human performed all the labour.
Modern technology has perfected the illusion. Behind every “smart” system lies human labor: content moderators, data labelers, riders, click-workers. Concealed and exploited behind the glossy façade of automation. The Mechanical Turk never vanished: it scaled. Our machines pretend to think, and our workers are forced to pretend they are invisible.
Gamification & Streamification
Hamster Wheel
Platforms are engineered to be addictive, hard to exit. Likes, comments, notifications, hearts: gamified dopamine drips that keep us running without direction.
Streamification accelerates the loop: infinite content, infinite scroll, infinite exhaustion. The wheel of content never stops; it only speeds up. Users are framed as players, but in truth they are fuel. The hamster wheel appears playful, but its purpose is to keep us running until we forget that we are trapped in a cage of our own making.
Enshittification
Morphing Squares
Interfaces once felt innovative, intuitive, even joyful. Over time, they start degrading: features disappear, ads multiply, extraction intensifies.
It isn’t your imagination: things are getting worse by design. Platforms optimise not for experience but for profit, eroding usability in favour of monetisation. As apps degenerate into crap, the decline becomes systemic. Enshittification is not a glitch in the system, it is the system maturing into its final form.
Funnelling
White Rabbit
Once, the white rabbit lured dreamers into alternate realities: Wonderland, psychedelia, countercultural awakening. It symbolized curiosity as liberation.
Today, the rabbit hole has been weaponized. Instead of wonder, it offers funnels: pathways designed to radicalize the lonely, the insecure, the angry. Algorithms lead not to new worlds but to narrower ones. Following the rabbit no longer means awakening: too often, it means entrapment, a spiral where fear replaces imagination.
Renew
The Phoenix
The phoenix burns and is reborn, refusing the logic of planned obsolescence and reminding us that, sometimes, all we need is already in front of us.
In a culture that discards devices, identities, platforms, and people as soon as they stop generating profit, renewal becomes resistance. To renew is to break the cycle of disposal, to insist that continuity is possible even amid collapse. The phoenix does not fear ashes: it transforms them into a new beginning.
Weirdify
Dat Boi / A Frog
A frog on a unicycle, a meme, a glitch in the commodification of online culture. Frogs are digital tricksters, embodying the power of weirdness.
Where platforms enforce uniformity, weirdness flips the script. It resists optimization by being useless, and withstands commodification by shattering common sense. To weirdify is to reintroduce strangeness into systems that flatten us; it means breaking free from the shackles of arbitrary community guidelines. Frog logic > platform logic.
Outwit
Watermelon
In contexts of censorship, symbols evolve. The watermelon – red, green, black, white – became a proxy flag for Palestine when the real one was banned.
It spread as a quiet signal, soft resistance embedded in emojis, stickers, and interface margins. An act of outwitting automated suppression, using harmless imagery to express forbidden solidarity. Outwitting means turning constraint into creativity, weaponizing metaphor where speech is policed: a practice as old as authoritarianism itself.
Remember
Nokia 3310
Heavy, indestructible, stubbornly simple: the Nokia 3310 recalls a time when the internet seemed innocent, adventurous, and fun.
It evokes an era of open protocols, small communities, personal websites, slow connections, and fewer traps. A reminder that the web could be – and still could become – something gentler, stranger, freer. Memory is a tactic of defiance. To remember is to resist the claim that “there is no alternative.”
Disrupt
The Cluster-Duck
The weird kid staring at you from the other side of the digital courtyard. We grew up surfing the web; we will die reclaiming and defending it.
The duck isn’t just our spirit animal: it’s a totem, a symbol of all the weird, cute, and strange things we like about the internet. It’s the reason we, as Clusterduck, love doing what we’re doing. It’s a reminder to stay weird and disrupt the flow of algorithmic surveillance, even when others shake their heads in disbelief.
Explore
Surfer
Before algorithms fenced us in, we surfed. Hyperlinks led unpredictably from site to site, a vast ocean of personal pages, forums, archives, experiments.
To surf is to reclaim that freedom: to step outside recommender systems, beyond walled gardens, into the wild expanse of the open web. Exploration is an act of rebellion against platforms designed to keep us exactly where we are. The surfer glides along swells of possibility, guided not by feeds or algorithms, but by curiosity.
THE (W)HOLE REPOSITORY
Congratulations on making it this far!
In the section below, you will find a carefully curated list of online resources that aim to study, critique, and improve the vast world of digital infrastructures, with a special focus on the topics presented in this realm. If you like this section, please make sure to visit the main page of our repository, where you will find many more links from all the other realms of the (W)HOLE project.