("JP")

In the midst of the unfolding crisis with work – a fundamentally spiritual problem – it seems to me that we desperately need new cultural metaphors to describe labour. What, actually, is this thing called “work”? Why do we do it? What does it afford us? What can’t it afford us?

For now, I find solace in the metaphor of work as trace. In a world... See more

Legibility is a concept from James Scott’s seminal work, Seeing Like a State . It’s not a book that lends itself well to one-sentence summaries, but my attempt is “we assume that only what we can measure is real and everything that is real can be measured.”

The book is titled Seeing Like a State , because the idea of legibility as I’m using it here... See more

You see — if software is to have soul, it must feel more like the world around it. Which is the biggest clue of all that feeling is what’s missing from today’s software. Because the value of the tools, objects, and artworks that we as humans have surrounded ourselves with for thousands of years goes so far beyond their functionality. In many ways,

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An alive culture replaces distraction and escapism with mindful attention, direct experience, active participation, creative expression, deep connection, genuine sharing, and lasting community (in other words, it’s a utopia!).

In an alive culture, you follow what is interesting rather than having your mind be fed for profit. In an alive culture, you... See more

Applied “framing”: the interface

Most human behavior is strangely path-dependent. It’s significantly affected by strain and heuristics. By the way, if you sent that phone-only response out to my children’s generation, you’d get a 0% response rate because they really, really hate talking on the phone. What you do now is, for anyone under the age of... See more