How are we to prepare the young, whom we already scarcely know, for a future we cannot imagine, from a past that has been swept away?

We like to see designing friction as a fundamental design principle when working with digital culture. Instead of following design ethics that strive to eliminate friction we suggest to not only allow, but embrace friction, facilitate it: design [products with] digital technology in a way that makes space for our humanness. Here friction is a core ingredient. Digital technology should create environments and situations in which we can truly connect with each other, as well as with the unknown, the uncontrolled, with all senses, all elements, all emotions. Create situations that are not calculated beforehand, predicted and measured; situations that result from and amount to the present moment.

close attention inevitably facilitates transformation. Tsing calls this “the arts of noticing”, tactics for thinking without either the abstraction produced by quantification or deeply held assumptions of progress. If we are “agnostic about where we are going, we might look for what has been ignored”

Data-driven research methods necessitate the collection of huge quantities of data and in doing so, they dismantle opportunities for paying close specific attention to the world. These methods also tend to obscure the many other ways of building understanding. Also, perhaps intentionally, data collection increasingly acts to maintain the status quo. We use data to study problems that would be more effectively addressed through simple political action. The impetus to “study the problem” ad nauseam gives the appearance of addressing an issue while perfectly maintaining the present state of affairs.