We're reasoning with anachronistic metaphors. (Digital) Design is mostly a paint-by-numbers affair. Silicon Valley's stigmergy has sapped us of our imagination. Milking dopamine is de rigeur. The Monoculture has emerged.
Yet it's not all bad: The memeplex has matured. Strange ideas keep sabotaging the status quo. There are still sublime oases' in cyberspace. You can even have fun, if you know where to look.
If you're interested in exploring how we got into this mess, coding your way out of it, engaging in platform dissent, making up words, or just coloring outside the lines, then: welcome. You're one of us.
You. The strength of this project exists in plurality: many people with many ideas, experiences, thoughts and opinions. Everyone is welcome.
All interventions in the internet are valid. Any technical, socio-cultural, historical, geopolitical, ecological or anthropological cross section can be traversed. The canvas is intentionally broad. Have fun. Break preconceptions. Distort bias. Do your thing.
Your project could take the form of discordant interfaces• ethnographic studies• communications in compassion• critical essays on the status quo↗ • experiments in space and time • ritual design↗ • warping Identity • theatre • matter-of-fact monologues • hosting offline hangs at being online better↗ • creating new metaphors • burning A Pattern Language • throwing your phone out the window • walking↗ • or refining the art of Zuckerbergian Inquiry↗
Do you have 1 hour a week? Sure, the more time the better but I'm as flexible as you need me to be. My goal is to encourage you to explore a question. Travel as far as you can. Answers are unimportant.
Many of us are agitating against our new normal.
We see the symptoms of our troubles everywhere: our shallow design discourse. The littany of derivative apps. Global attention farming. Cultural homogeneity. An extremist pragmatism that discourages poetics. And so on.
An accidental community has emerged to explore new alternatives: they just don't know it. This is an attempt to bring them together.
January 2019 → April.