aron
@aronshelton
aron
@aronshelton
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
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Calm Tech and
We don't necessarily need to constantly interact with people “around” us on the web. The sensation of being in the quiet companionship of someone else, like reading next to them in a cafe, is what we're missing. The sense of ambiently sharing space – of being co-present – while engaged in other activities is a staple of shared public spaces that we're still figuring out how to design in the digital realm.
Our current “multiplayer” experiences draw too much attention to the multiplayer-ness. The other people around you demand attention. They move. They flash. They point to exactly what they're focused on, drawing you away from your own focal point. We are missing out on a fuzzier, softer sense of the shared web.
In the end, one can see collective curation to be the path moving forward, and to go back to biblical prophecies mentioned prior, if biting from the “forbidden apple” made us Godlike, maybe the fault was in the individualistic approach to “an all encompassing being” -the internet has given us the opportunity to become enlightened communities, if we
... See moreAn 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 more“I’m not one of those people with their heads in the clouds; I’m one of those whose entire body has been consumed by the clouds.” — Antero Alli
In the 2010s, supply chain innovation opened up lifestyle brands. In the 2020s, financial mechanism innovation is opening up the space for incentivized ideologies, networked publics, and co-owned faiths.

How to Citizen: “To citizen” is to show up. We just assume there’s something for us to do, and we don’t always know what that is, but we have an orientation toward, “Put me in. I don’t have to lead, but I have to be a part of the thing.”
Number two: “To citizen” is to invest in relationships with yourself, with others, and with the planet around you. We have inherited a story of separation of all these things, and they’re actually all one. The quantum physicist will tell you that really in a short sentence. So that myth busted.
“To citizen” is to understand power and all the different ways we have it. Eric Lou, I call him one of our founding guests, founder of Citizen University. He says: power is just the ability to get somebody to do what you want them to do.” And we have different ways of doing that. Physical force is obvious. Money, especially in this society, is pretty obvious. Ideas, sharing them. You’re very powerful, Krista. Putting our attention on something, we give power to what we give attention to, and we can choose, within default settings and design incentives, but we have the power to choose what we give our power to with our attention.
Fourth of four of these principles is: “To citizen” is to value the collective. We do all these things out of a sense of collective self-interest, not just personal, individual self-interest. Valerie Kaur was our very first guest for How To Citizen.
Be an IDIOT! Though he doesn’t mean it like you should just be stupid. In fact the pejorative use of the word idiot is actually a fairly new thing in human history. Back in Ancient Greece for example the equivalent of the word we now use as idiot… really just meant someone who was a common person who didn’t really participate in public affairs or
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