Community

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

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People have all kinds of ambitions, goals, and plans, but consistently following through is the hard part. Some people are wired to make steady progress or have learned to do this well. But many people depend on external pressures and constraints, feedback, check-ins, and high stakes — financial, professional, or social — to spur them into action.

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The size of the effect is astounding. Cross-class friendships are a better predictor of upward mobility than school quality, job availability, community cohesion or family structure. If these results are true, then we have largely ignored a powerful way to help people realise the American dream.

But we’re human beings, we do not want to be replaceable. We desperately want to be valued for who we are. Becoming disentangled from your web of mutual commitments, shared history, and collective responsibility is to be rendered into a transaction, a slave.2

We want to be loved, to be secure in the knowledge that no matter how much we’ve torn apart... See more

It seems to me that Don believed deep down that our worlds were worth decorating, and that doing so was a joyful act. “The people who use lawn ornaments are typically friendly because they’re decorating the outside of their house for someone else,” he once told an interviewer.