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There's a thread interwoven in here about integrative pulling together, about caring, that I hope tech can better do. The current approach of many different apps, many ealled gardens feels hostile to the restful, formable/malleable, condusive set of systems we might be able to actually handle. It starts out quite high level, and I think tech often does push out to different ends rather than help pull together: > When I think about the forces shaping modern society, I tend to characterize them as centrifugal rather than centripetal forces, which is to say that these forces tend to pull us apart rather than bring us together. And the impact of current digital systems: > When I consider the forces operating on the person, however, a different frame comes to mind. These I think of as forces which deplete rather than renew us. As I used to observe with some frequency, the arc of digital culture bends toward exhaustion. > What I mean by this is simple: when we think of the way our days are structured, the kinds of activities most readily on offer, the mode of relating to the world we are encouraged to adopt, etc.—in each case we are more likely to find ourselves spent rather than sustained. The default set of experiences on offer to us are more likely to leave us feeling drained and depleted rather than satisfied and renewed. In our consumption, we are consumed. We are subject to narrow confined systems, and the feeling of being coralled & contained & worked by theee systems rather than being made competent, knowing workers of tech is widespread & problematic. Ursala Franklin speaks of holistic versus prescriptive technologies[1], work versus control technologies, which both divide between tech that aims to genuinely ennoble versus tech that shapes us. Most tech has indeed de-personalized, has become far off, aloof, non-integrative, even the tech like social networks & tiktok, which offer minimum control. Rather than this hostile technical ecosystem, tech ought to have data-portability, interoperation, protocols. We oight have freedom of clients, have user agency. Such that refinement & easing, on our terms, is possible to explore. There's works like Karli Coss's personal infrastructure[2] that pioneer what a cohesive, malleable system might be. But this is stealing the fire back from the corporate overlords. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p... [2] https://beepb00p.xyz/myinfra.html and more, https://hn.algolia.com/?q=beepb00p.xyz |