Bogna Konior's The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet offers an extreme account of what can be at stake in becoming legible. Drawing on the dark forest metaphor from Liu Cixin's science fiction, Konior considers communication as simultaneously necessary and risky: to communicate is also to disclose one's existence. Within networked environments, becoming increasingly describable and readable does not simply enable connection; it also increases the possibilities for classification and governance.

Personal Bubble does not adopt the stronger proposition that connection necessarily produces conflict. What is useful here is the tension Konior exposes between relation and disclosure. Becoming perceptible allows something to enter a relationship, while the same perceptibility can make it available to forms of control.

Something notices me and immediately tries to be useful.

I have become so accustomed to this that I rarely ask what had to become visible about me first. Bogna Konior writes about the internet as a dark forest: becoming visible allows connection, but also makes us easier to locate, describe and govern. There is a strange bargain here. To be responded to, I first have to become readable.