If The Internet Was A Place

I’ve come to think of software applications as a form of digital architecture: some are places of concentration, others of collaboration, others clearly just for fun. Software’s emotional dimension is crucial: how it feels dictates how it’s used. (Architects hire environmental psychologists; tech companies hire user-experience researchers.)... See more

Imagine if instead of approaching our computer as a cold, mechanical piece of metal and glass that receives inputs and delivers outputs, we saw it as a relationship with the emergent, ineffable internet mystic that we’re collectively creating.

How might we approach that device differently?

“We want to think of the internet as a physical place. It is not about making the virtual physical, but rather to argue that the virtual also exists physically.”

- Woon Tien Wei

I was walking the dog this morning and I was reflecting on how the things we build on the digital world seem to mirror what we build on the physical one. Big social media platforms are the metropolis: dense, busy, chaotic. They’re the place that never sleeps and there’s always something new going on. Something new to see, something new to do.... See more

The difference between schools and libraries

From John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education (via Austin Kleon):

To begin with, libraries are usually comfortable, clean, and quiet. They are orderly places where you can actually read instead of just pretending to read.

For some reason libraries are never age-segregated, nor do

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I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or been to the roof of Facebook. The roof is amazingly landscaped — it has native species of plants and these meandering walking paths — and in a way, it’s exactly what I’m talking about in the book. It’s the architecture of thinking, it’s put there to encourage innovation and conversation, but just for employees.  

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