aron
@aronshelton
aron
@aronshelton

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.
TLDR 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.


No matter how many people come over for dinner, you’re only going to be able to engage with a few.
And no matter how big the crowd in the arena, the musicians can only see the faces of a few hundred.
An investor can only be engaged and smart about a very small number of companies.
And it doesn’t matter how many students are in the class, the teacher
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