on agency & what it gives us
Positive Friction encourages an alternative design practice in order to restore human agency within online spaces
DVTK • Positive Friction
The narrative out there right now is revolution - taking back power, reclaiming control and forcing accountability. And maybe that happens. But I also know that revolution requires collective action at scale, and what I'm seeing in peoples’ behaviors and everyday choices is a very different kind of revolution.
People are leaving. The natural
... See moreJasmine Bina • Repricing the Human Experience
Adaptation work builds agency. It counters the attitude of ‘There’s nothing I can do’/‘I’m too small to make a difference.’ This is because, unlike decarbonisation work, it is by definition focused, local, concrete and tangible. One then reaches the point of people being able to say to themselves something like this: ‘Our climate concern isn’t just
... See moreRupert Read • Welcome to the Chaoscene
‘I Call It Botanarchy’: The Hackney Guerrilla Gardener Bringing Power to the People
Damien Gayletheguardian.comMeanwhile, the majority of “normals” (to borrow a term from the sci-fi film Gattaca) are expected to take orders, complete tasks, stand in line, clock in and out . . . punctually, obediently, subserviently. No dancing in the halls, and certainly no daydreaming about a world put together differently.
Ruha Benjamin • Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)
Often, hope works best alongside tools for proactively tackling future challenges. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise and act upon that imagination, then that’s powerful, and for me, this is a slow form of critical activism.
Anab Jain • Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics
Most of us really have very little say in the diagnoses we get, even though we all carry a lot of self-knowledge about our bodies and minds. You see the impacts of this a lot when it comes to mental health and neurodivergence: people fighting for years for their autism or ADHD diagnosis, or trying to get an eating disorder diagnosis despite their
... See moreDazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
A regulated woman pauses and gets curious. She stops absorbing what does not belong to her. That pivot is often misread as disengagement, even though it represents the return of agency.
Substack • The Workplace Runs on Dysregulated Women
I believe we write the meaning of life as we live it. I believe it is up to us to write a story worth living. I do not believe in the surrender of hope or imagination any more than I believe it is acceptable to give up on the survival of others, or of all life on Earth.