aron
@aronshelton
Designing and navigating various contextual arrangements with an enigmatic sense of hope. #wayfinder
aron
The vast interconnection enabled by digital platforms has ended up creating more of a sense of sameness than diversity. Users are subtly guided toward the same subsets of topics, urged on by recommendations that are designed not to serve their interests but to create profitable attention fodder to sell to advertisers. Instagram doesn’t care that... See more
Welcome to Filterworld｜Dirt
The danger of living in possibility versus taking action: how embracing limits and failure builds strength and real growth
TRANSCRIPT
I could become an actor. I could become a great novelist. I could become a CEO. I could be Elon Musk II. But the way the world works is you don achieve anything unless you have limits Having limits and hitting that wall and that resistance is what makes you learn is what makes you great is how the human brain functions
And what I mean by that is
... See moreTLDR is internet-speak for “Too long, didn’t read.” It’s one of the consequences of too much to choose from, combined with a lazy quest for convenience. It’s a checklist mindset. And all we get after we finish a checklist is a bunch of checked boxes, not real understanding.
Seth Godin • The Cliffs Notes paradox
The designers of complex adaptive systems are not strictly designing systems themselves. They are hinting those systems towards anticipated outcomes, from an array of existing interrelated systems. These are designers that do not understand themselves to be in the center of the system. Rather, they understand themselves to be participants, shaping
... See moreKevin Slavin • Design as Participation
An attention ecology goes against the idea of an attention economy, in which one’s attention is directly monetized and pitted against other things that are also meant to co-opt your attention.
Within the architecture of a project, whether it’s a printed piece or a website or something else, we’re always trying to deeply consider how one’s attention
... See moreYuk Hui, a contemporary philosopher from Hong Kong, writes on the potential for digital networks to develop new kinds of urban solidarities. He writes , “for such concrete solidarity to emerge, we need a techno-diversity which develops alternative technologies such as new social networks, collaborative tools, and infrastructures of digital
... See moreJesse McKee • From Polycrisis to the Smart Commons
Good protocols, in short, are the embodiments of A. N. Whitehead’s famous assertion that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” Not only do good protocols deliver civilizational advances, they do so in sustainable ways. “Stability without stagnation” (a guiding
... See moreVenkatesh Rao • The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols
Hyperstition is a positive feedback circuit including culture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies. Superstitions are merely false beliefs, but hyperstitions — by their very existence as ideas — function causally to bring about their own reality.