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.
But instead of designing interfaces and exploring use cases for tomorrow’s glass-screened gadgets, Victor’s “forty-years-out vision” concerns nothing less than redesigning computing itself — not as a product or service, but “as a medium of thought.”
We identified three distinct opportunities — new narratives, social reading with richer context, and providing tools for critical thinking — and developed a design concept around each one.
Each app builds a moat and walls to protect the hoard of data its peasants produce. This is both for reasons of protection, and power. How did this condition emerge?Before the advent of the internet, apps ran on your computer and saved data to your computer. The internet flipped this around. Web software ran remotely on server computers, and saved... See more
But size is not the most troubling concept we have to deal with. It's time, or, more precisely, the time we have. If you're lucky enough to live to one hundred, you have five thousand two hundred weeks at your disposal.