This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
[The word ‘monetize’ implies there is no ‘attention economy’ in the pure sense: users need to pay fiat at some point.]
Exalting data, missing meaning
[Data-centric approaches might better fit fields like manufacturing, transport, and aviation, perhaps less so education, consumer products, and other domains involving messy humans; we risk depriving ourselves of insights from philosophy, intuition, and stories, as they may still be inaccessible through quantitative approaches.]
[Specific initiatives might appear to have no effect on engagement, but might unexpectedly and invisibly affect the actor’s social or political over the long-term.]
[Might seem futile to add one’s voice to the cacophony of others on social media, especially as it makes little difference to people suffering over there, but my voice is all I have.]
FROM “Pressure to perform” TO “Freedom to express”
FROM “Low-level anxiety” TO “Aliveness and possibility”
FROM “Immediacy and impermanence” TO “Slowness and contemplation”
FROM “Mindless consumption” TO “Mindful curation”
FROM “Loneliness and disconnection” TO “Connection to ideas and people”
FROM “Perpetual information overload” TO “Joy of discovery and insight”
FROM “Bogged down in irrelevant stuff” TO “The right information when you need it”
FROM “Exploiting our attention” TO “Living in healthy ways with abundance”
FROM “Linear and hierarchical interfaces” TO “Associative, context-rich digital gardens”
The Future of Search Is Boutique
[Makes little sense to search for recipes and freelancers with the same interface: better to create diverse experiences with specific affordances for each niche.]
Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster
[Instead of saving an hour from not having to walk an hour to work, speed and distance increases so that we spend a comparable amount of time occupied with new trajectories.]
How Close Is That Photo to the Truth? What to Know in the Age of AI
[The camera’s photon sensor converts light into pixel data and makes guesses about how much red, green, and blue to represent in each one.]
[Breaking up the image into multiple frames helps better represent shadows and skies while reducing noise.]
[Cameras make choices about how to make photos more vivid or different skin colors better represented, and decide how to store them for maximum compression.]
Problems and Goals for Interoperability, Collaboration, and Security in a Solid Pod
Applications must have a shared understanding of data
Data must be discoverable.
Data must be durable.
Data must be portable.
Problem #3 - Disparate entities using different applications must be able to safely and effectively interoperate within their scope of authorization
Problem #4 - People shouldn’t need to think about how to physically organize their data to use Solid.
Principles for sharing on the Internet
[Your opinion has more credibility the better you can argue against your own points.]
[Social media systematically pushes you to ideological extremes.]
The Roads to Reaction and Response
[Doing ‘something’ as a reaction to moral injury isn’t always the right move.]
[Hot takes feed the cycle of reaction.]
[Algorithms ensure everyone has an audience, no matter how small.]
[Your desire to ‘just do something’ will be co-opted by those in power to ends that aren’t in your interest.]
The Oxymoron of “Data-Driven Innovation”
[What we label ‘visionary’ from the past was often an effort to center needs of the marginalized. At that time, as the privileged were unserved in ways similar those at the margins, making an app or internet product was an example of ‘building those with special needs improves it for everyone’. But it isn’t visionary any longer when privileged people do it because they’re already marginalized. The ‘data-driven’ development popular today tends to favour majorities, and thus consistently results in bland, incrementalist ideas not serving the marginalized.]
[‘Do it for yourself’ fell out of fashion because white cis men weren’t getting visionary ideas that way. The potential is still there if the doer is a marginalized voice.]
We gotta get over this idea that we’re being mensches by handing over our stolen power to unworthy or inexperienced charity cases. No. Marginalized people out-qualify mainstream existing leadership on injecting vision because only their perspectives can deliver a visionary product in an industry already optimized for mainstream perspectives.
In the same way that Instagram forces posting regularly in order to exist, perhaps all reverse-chronological timelines force ephemeral content. You can reference or quote to old tweets if you’re lucky, but still feels like ‘posting once makes it disappear’ unless you repeat the same isolated fragment frequently. How can one get a sense for how another thinks if they only read one tweet at a time and those tweets are spread out over a year? Perhaps ‘update platforms’ are not designed to understand larger thoughts? Blog posts can also be reverse-chronological but each can include dense context and past references so that you can collapse time in order to understand larger thoughts. So perhaps ‘update platforms’ are best suited to your ‘current status’ and those might as well disappear after 24 hours like ’ephemeral stories’; if you want to get around ephemeral content, use a blog.
doing some programming after months of none, feels kind of absurd to do this regularly, takes so much to express an app, looking forward to something easier replacing this someday
(decentralize as) decomposing the remains of zombie networks too big to die so that new life can sprout everywhere like grass