Calm Tech

Principle that technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention. Technology can communicate, but doesn't need to speak.

Alara Orhon Ozseker and

Dolly Parton on why she’s only reachable through fax and doesn’t text: “I’m a low-tech girl in a high-tech world. I don’t want to talk to everybody that wants to talk to me. I don’t text because I don’t want to have to answer.”

Pop Base

twitter.com

alex

Slow Technology: Designing for Reflection

Designing technology that encourages reflection and mental rest, rather than just efficiency, is the focus of this paper. The concept of "slow technology" is introduced and examples are discussed.

Link

phoebe

Slow design

design.family

sari and

No More Shiny Tomorrows: Futurism Needs to Get Real

Amber Case caseorganic.medium.com

Alara Orhon Ozseker and

Thumbnail of www-x-com-kepano-status-1756468726743122140

Why @obsdmd is 100% user-supported and not backed by VC investors: 1. We want to stay small, we don't need to hire lots of people 2. We follow strict principles that we do not want compromise 3. Our users are happy to support us, we don't need VC money Obsidian will not exist forever, no app will. However, the files you create in Obsidian are you... See more

kepano

x.com

andrea and

Technology increasingly robs us of the mystical in our lives. Not everything needs to be fast and available and convenient. I love ideas and products that reveal themselves slowly - more whisper than scream.

-Dennis Paphitis

sari

Screw you, Computer: get on my terms, in my environment, and you respect me and my biology and what matters to me. Don’t subjugate me by putting a face-hugger on my face. So anyways, I got some ranting at this point.

aalex

Source

Ritual Technology

Gordon Brander subconscious.substack.com

aaron

Seven thoughts on ritual:

Rituals are the feedback loops we construct to construct ourselves.
Rituals shape the medium of time.
Rituals orient us.
Rituals are protocols.
Ritual is a form of play.
Rituals take place in a world set apart.
Rituals make meaning.

We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use. Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop. Ritual technology operates on a different timescale. Underneath the fast twitch of compulsion loops is the slow thrum of ritual. Elder feedback systems. An antidote to algorithmic engagement addiction?

The Zeitgeist Is Changing. A Strange, Romantic Backlash to the Tech Era Looms

Ross Barkan theguardian.com

DDavid Pennington

“The new romanticism has arrived…Backlash is bubbling against tech’s dominance in everyday life, particularly the godlike algorithms - their true calculus still proprietary - that rule all of digital existence.”