I believe the common prevailing metaphor—the internet as cloud—is problematic. The internet is not one all-encompassing, mysterious, and untouchable thing. (In early patent drawings depicting the internet, it appears as related shapes: a blob, brain, or explosion.) These metaphors obfuscate the reality that the internet is made up of individual... See more
We don’t want to make websites instead of books. To understand what a digital book should be, it’s worth trying to perceive it as an information format, not a physical medium.
In the words of MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle: computers empowered their users, making them feel smart[er], “in control”, and “more fully participant in the future”.
I think we’ll see communities of users craft downloadable ITEs specific to certain kinds of work or workflows. [...] These kits are a kind of “hypertemplate.” They provide a kind of pre-fabricated foundation for knowledge work that users can share to help others get started. At the same time, power users will use these to capture many aspects of... See more
The Internet is not an autonomous being. Its growing energy use is the consequence of actual decisions made by software developers, web designers, marketing departments, publishers and internet users. With a lightweight, off-the-grid solar-powered website, we want to show that other decisions can be made.