Looking Into Black Boxes

Most of us spend our whole day on phones and computers without having any idea how they actually work. We’re on Instagram, downloading episodes we’re not supposed to watch, messaging strangers with photos that probably shouldn’t exist. We do it all automatically, without thinking. And if you actually stop and think about how little you understand the thing you’ve been staring at for the past six hours, it’s kind of unsettling.

Fiona’s been digging through internet technology and digital culture for a while now. She decided to make a web series about it with two other people—an attempt to explain how your phone actually works, what’s running underneath all the software, why the internet is shaped the way it is. Not in some technical jargon-heavy way, just plainly. The way a normal person would want to understand it.

That’s the thing I respect about it—not trying to be everything to everyone, not dumbed down or overly complex, just actual explanation. For the people who use this stuff constantly but have never really thought about how it happens.