An Online Magazine You Can’t Read Online
nautil.us
nautil.us
There's a term for this, it's called a 'supernormal stimuli' [0], first popularized by Nikolaas Tinbergen, a Dutch biologist who explored the phenomenon when almost all species of animals he experimented with were drawn to hyper-attractive synthetic objects of interest (eggs, sexual mates) over natural ones. [1]
That's the essence of the present day clickbait infested web, imo -- Tech companies spending billions of dollars to sedate us with barrage of stimuli that our brains never evolved to cope with in the first place. [2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus#In_biolog...
[1] https://lifehacker.com/supernormal-stimuli-is-your-brain-bui...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon...
I'm on a desktop, with a hard wired ethernet connection. It's also my work machine. To go 'offline' I'd have to either pull out my network cable, or go into network connections and disable the NIC. My work email would start complaining, and before long someone from IT will probably show up to see why my machine has fallen off the network.
As others have said... there's also Offline Mode in Chrome.
Now, imagine I'm a less techie user, using the browser that came with my work PC. I'd have no idea how to go 'offline', or even worse, be physically unable to. As such this content is out of reach to me.
I hope this sort of trick doesn't become a trend. There's a big difference between 'not connected to the internet' and 'offline'.
I look at reading this magazine as a choice one makes to experience a readable list of articles while being disconnected. It’s somewhat rare to get such experiences online since most sites are geared toward short sensational pieces and a bunch of other listicles and articles to get you to stay and keep jumping around on the same site (or send you to another shady site through Taboola or the rightly named Outbrain or something else).
It’s about you, the reader, choosing to have that experience.
If you don’t want to be disconnected but want to read this magazine, there are plenty of ways to cheat. The creator of this magazine, Nick Bolin, is not going to fight tooth and nail to stop you from connecting (as clearly stated in an answer referring to looking things up while reading print material). This is not a never ending arms race like in the case of ad blockers vs. ad block killers.
What will finally matter is whether there is a good audience for the content and this model. Even if that happens to be a tiny niche, that’s ok. The creator, at least in my reading of the interview, is not after world domination or scaling to beat every other site out there that’s currently fighting for our attention.
They have created this complicated solution when there is a much simpler one. How about just NOT loading up your website with tracking / analytics / ads (shock and horror?). You could still have the same magazine style with no distractions. At the end of the day it would serve the same purpose?
Saved you a click (and cookies): https://thedisconnect.co/
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The airplane mode idea is nice. With PWA's emerging this could be nice.
with wifi there's a bit pink box saying "disable your wifi". turning off wifi does nothing.
I tried turning off my wireless interface but that didn't accomplish the desired result because my computer uses Ethernet to connect to the network.
(Yes, I know, "wifi" is now a synonym for "any external network connection" but I also have the--possibly irrational--view that people who claim to understand "the Internet" should also know to make the distinction.)
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