The Best Articles in Digital Life
The most useful articles and videos in Digital Life from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Digital Life Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Digital Life by Refind users.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
why Japan's internet is weirdly designed
Use code ANSWER to get 10% off your Hostinger plan today (on top of ongoing offers like their Black Friday/Cyber Monday $1.99 for Premium Shared web hosting ...
What is ...?
New to Digital Life? These articles make an excellent introduction.
How to Use Discord: A Beginner’s Guide
Confused by the buzzy social platform? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Technology Doing to Us?
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the arms race for human attention, the ethics of persuasion, the consequences of having an ad-based economy, the dynamics of regret, and other topics.
How to ...?
How to Check Your Devices for Stalkerware
You deserve privacy. Here's how to check your phone, laptop, and online accounts to make sure no one's looking over your shoulder.
How to talk to conspiracy theorists—and still be kind
Experts and r/ChangeMyView subreddit moderators offer 10 tips to debunk conspiracy theories convincingly—and kindly.
How to make your offline self harder to find online
Keep your personal information personal
«Our goal in this article is to help you condense your attack surface as much as possible.»
How to Dox Yourself on the Internet
A step-by-step guide to finding and removing your personal information from the internet.
How to avoid Amazon: the definitive guide to online shopping
Amazon is now making up to £8,800 a second, while concerns persist about its tax affairs, treatment of staff and effect on small retailers. Here’s how to buy everything from technology to beauty to…
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Digital Life on Refind.
Consumers often can’t detect fake reviews – and underestimate how many negative reviews might be fakes
Online reviews have a big impact on buying decisions – but how can shoppers sort the real ones from the fakes?
The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews
Glimpses of humanity in an unlikely corner of the internet.
Barbie was the first avatar: the crisis of identity in a digital age
In this piece you will learn about: 1) our hypothesis on why young people today are in a state of identity crisis or, as we call it, “identity moratorium”, 2) five key trends that drive this crisis,…
The Next Big Social App May Be One You Don't Use (Yet)
Apps like BeReal and Mastodon broke out in 2022. It's only the beginning.
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Digital Life—all under 10 minutes.
Digital detoxes don’t actually work
A digital detox is a period in which a person voluntarily refrains from using digital devices including smartphones, computers and social media platforms. However, recent research has shown that…
«The internet has made it possible to talk at length with strangers who share your passion for any subject—make the most of it»
With Stable Diffusion, you may never believe what you see online again
AI image synthesis goes open source, with big implications.
«Image synthesis arguably brings implications as big as the invention of the camera—or perhaps the creation of visual art itself. Even our sense of history might be at stake, depending on how things shake out. Either way, Stable Diffusion is leading a new wave of deep learning creative tools that are poised to revolutionize the creation of visual media»
Is your smartphone ruining your memory? A special report on the rise of ‘digital amnesia’
‘I can’t remember anything’ is a common complaint these days. But is it because we rely so heavily on our smartphones? And do the endless alerts and distractions stop us forming new memories?
More apps, more problems
Apps are supposed to make life easier, but they’re stressing employees out.
Psychology Experts on Whether Manifesting Actually Works
It's not necessarily just wishful thinking.
«While it may get you into a positive mindset and help you focus on reaching your goals, the idea of manifestation can fail to acknowledge some of the systemic barriers to success in our society, Bartz points out.»
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Digital Life.
A Brief History of Digital Nomads
Excerpt from the new book Global Natives
In the dark: the internet sparked a revolution, then it was turned off
Seven years, 60 countries, 935 internet shutdowns: How authoritarian regimes found an off switch for dissent.
The future of AI is a conversation with a computer
Read-write intelligence.
«The result of communing with it is a sort of “emergence,” they told me, an experience of “being part of a larger ecosystem than just the individual human or the machine.”»
I can only promise you that it's going to get weirder
Technology is always changing the nature of human life.
Thanks to AI, it’s probably time to take your photos off the Internet
AI tech makes it trivial to generate harmful fake photos from a few social media pictures.
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Digital Life, including:
OM
Partner emeritus @Trueventures I was a reporter once. I write about tech @ http://om.co My Tumblr: http://Om.blog. Subscribe to my FREE Newsletter: http://om.co/newsletters/
Seth Godin
Author, blogger, a lifetime of projects. This is a retweet of my blog.
zeynep tufekci
Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @Columbia professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter @insight http://theinsight.org
Mark Manson
3x #1 NYTimes bestselling author. Best known for F-Bombs and uncomfortable truths. Giving life advice that doesn't suck since 2008.
Nir Eyal
Bestselling author of "Hooked" and "Indistractable"
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Digital Life, including:
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦
Writes about economics, tweets about rabbits. Subscribe to my Substack: http://noahpinion.substack.com Email: noahpiniontwitter@gmail.com
MIT Technology Review
Our in-depth reporting on innovation reveals and explains what’s really happening now to help you know what’s coming next. http://technologyreview.com/newsletters
Vox
Understand the news. Support Vox with a contribution: http://vox.com/give-now
Stratechery
Free Articles from http://stratechery.com. For Daily Updates, follow @StratecheryMO. For the author, follow @benthompson.
Ness Labs
The learning community for ambitious knowledge workers. Join us to think better, learn faster, and work happier: http://nesslabs.com/membership 🧠✨
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web for every user, tailored to the user’s interests. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
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- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Which sources does Refind monitor in Digital Life?
We monitor hundreds of sources in Digital Life, including Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦, MIT Technology Review, Vox, Stratechery, Ness Labs, and many more.
Who are the thought leaders in Digital Life?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Digital Life, including OM, Seth Godin, zeynep tufekci, Mark Manson, Nir Eyal.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
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When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
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