The Hinternet Is Entering Phase 3

Be a Part of It!

Here at The Hinternet we are traversing, paradoxically, a moment of growth and stagnation at once. Stagnation, because we are now in that damnable season of summer, when it seems as if everyone quits their posts at once, and as if, with the whole world running on a skeleton crew, nothing can get done at all. Our Founding Editor, meanwhile, who never quite grew out of his goth phase, still dresses in black from head to toe every day of the year, and grouses incessantly that all this fun in the sun is not for those “of [his] kind”. For years he has claimed to suffer from what he dares to call “RSAD” (“Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder”). He spends these months in stubborn denial, telling us that summer is not a time for leisure, no, but for shutting the blinds, turning up the A/C so high the rest of us have to put on our woolen socks and wrap ourselves in blankets, and planning what comes next.

In light of all this, you may observe what appears from the outside to be a work slow-down here at The Hinternet over the next month or so. But you would be very naïve to take that appearance for reality. The relative quiet, you see, is in fact only a sign of the radical metamorphosis underway in this period of our estivation, from which we will emerge, when the gnomon begins again to cast a respectable shadow at the meridian, into what we are calling Phase 3 of The Hinternet (Phase 2 began in September, 2024, when our Masthead took what remains more or less its present form).

Today we have some announcements in connection with our Phase 3 planning.

1.

We are very excited to tell you that we have, with the help of our adept legal counsel, filed the paperwork to establish The Hinternet Foundation as a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity in the state of California. The Hinternet Foundation is legally and financially a separate operation from The Hinternet, and we will be relying on the lawyers to tell us, at every turn, exactly how much cross-pollination between the two sides is permitted.

The Foundation’s mission, as we believe we have mentioned before, is “to steward human creativity into a machine-dominated future”. We have a remarkable group of backers for this project, and soon we will be launching a number of new cultural initiatives, large-scale collaborations, and other projects that may have some hope of making a dent in the spirit of the age, perhaps even in the curvature of the universe. Now that we have pending non-profit status, we are more interested than ever in being in touch with potential investors in our initiative, to whom we will happily send our sleek new “Investor Showcase — Summer 2025” slide show.

The reason we are discussing this today, however, is that we are currently in the process of filling some of the roles in our non-profit. Rather than returning again and again to our same old roster of familiar faces, for some of these roles we determined it might be useful to bring in some fresh blood. To this end, the following text is a generic announcement, written entirely without any of that Hinternet verve, according to the conventions of the day:

We are in the process of founding a California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to guiding and preserving the highest expressions of human creativity in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and technological transformation. As we prepare to launch, we are seeking dedicated individuals to serve in key officer roles on our founding team, including Secretary and/or Treasurer.

These roles are foundational to the life of the organization and will involve close collaboration in shaping its early strategic direction, establishing internal structures, and overseeing compliance and governance in accordance with nonprofit best practices. Officers will be listed on the organization’s public filings and will participate in regular board meetings (virtual or in person).

At this stage, these are voluntary (uncompensated) positions, appropriate for individuals motivated by a commitment to our mission and the opportunity to play a meaningful role in building an institution from the ground up. Academic, cultural, and/or technological background is a plus.

We especially welcome interest from those with experience in nonprofit administration, legal and financial oversight, organizational governance, or relevant intellectual and artistic fields.

If you are intrigued by the idea of helping to found a new cultural institution, please send a brief note of interest and CV to editor@the-hinternet.com.

2.

As you will already know, this year The Hinternet —the for-profit publication— is hosting a couple of cultural initiatives of its own. There will be a lot more of this to come, and beginning in 2026 we will be pursuing these initiatives under the aegis of the Foundation rather than of the publication. But for now we are still in Phase 2, and of course must complete the work we have already begun.

To this end, we want to remind you of two things, with which regular readers will by now be very familiar.

The first is our inaugural Hinternet Summer Program on “Scholarly Fabulation: Theory and Methods”. We will be meeting on Friday and Saturday August 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, and 23, at 11:00 Pacific, 14:00 Eastern, 19:00 UK, 20:00 CET. You can read a fuller description of the program here. Participants will have the option of doing appropriately “fabulous” final projects, a selection of which will later be published at The Hinternet. The only rule for these projects is that they must be works of creative art, in the broadest sense, that contain within them a work of scholarship. These can be old-fashioned hand-crafted documents, or they can be tech-aided multimedia innovations. You can rely on AI, if you like, or on any other mental prosthetic available. It’s all up to you. We already have a full list of participants, but if any readers have been living under a rock these past months, are just now finding out about this, and are convinced that they must be a part of this exciting new venture, please contact us right away with a few words about who you are, why you are interested in participating, and what you expect you might want to do as your final project. It’s late in the day, but we’d still love to hear from you!

Neither is it too late to get to work on your submission for the inaugural Hinternet Essay Prize Contest, in which you propose your entirely original answer to the question: “How might current and emerging technologies best be mobilized to secure perpetual peace?” The deadline is September 1. The complete Contest rules may be found here. We imagine that any submission that has a chance of winning will have taken at least six weeks of the author’s life as essentially a full-time commitment, so if you are thinking of submitting, you better get to work. We have received a number of submissions already that —how shall we put this gently?— do not give much indication of any real commitment on their author’s part at all, submissions that might have been appropriate, as our Founding Editor has taken to saying, if there were at least “two fewer zeroes” in the amount of the prize money. “Probably more like three fewer.” It’s no big deal. Rejection is easy for us. But if you are committed to winning this Contest, be sure that you are submitting work that actually stands a chance of making a difference in the world — of actually earning the prize.

3.

This final announcement concerns only The Hinternet, and not The Hinternet Foundation (are you getting a sense of how the division works yet?) or any of the activities that will be moving over to that side of our operations in the future. Beginning in September, we would like to bring on at least one, perhaps two, regular columnists. Applicants should be prepared to cover a particular “beat” that might be of interest to us —someone to do a weekly or fortnightly press review would be particularly welcome—, should have their own distinct and unmistakable voice, one that is analogous in its distinctness to the others we showcase here at The Hinternet, while also being entirely its own thing. Remuneration will be based on subscriptions generated: the more the readers like your work, the more you will earn. We are especially interested in hearing from writers who occupy a different social demographic than our Founding Editor — with respect notably to gender, whatever that is, but also, perhaps even more importantly, with respect to age. Writers with interests that are totally off the radar of our current stable of contributors —e.g., writers who care about fashion, and who, like Roland Barthes, can write about it so compellingly that they could make even JSR care about it—, are especially encouraged to apply. The one exception here is professional sports coverage. If that is your beat, you are encouraged to pursue it somewhere else. We are flexible and broad-minded, to a point, but every community has its limits.

Again, interested parties should contact us at editor@the-hinternet.com.

—The Hinternet