the most profound technologies are those that disappear. they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it
i remember coming home from school c. 2009 and turning on the family computer. it was an intentional activity, like watching a movie or climbing a tree. when i got bored or wanted to do something else, i would turn it off and be fully offline. i wasn’t missing anything — everything would be there for me when i went back online
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐ │ activity │ internet │ activity │ └──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘ (internet as intentional activity)
but it’s inverted now. such a large portion of my life is giving computers consistent, but rarely full, attention. it’s not an intentional activity but an invisible current that permeates my life. i am no longer pushed to the computer — pushed because i have free time or have to do school work, etc — but pulled. notifications, emails, alerts, banners, etc: they all tug at my attention creating a constant undercurrent
i am always online, even if i am not looking at a screen.
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐ │ activity │ activity │ activity │ ├──────────┴──────────┴──────────┤ │ internet │ └────────────────────────────────┘ (internet as continuous current)
this isn’t a judgement. i’m not saying one is better than the other. what i’m interested in is the geneology: where we came from, where we are, and (hopefully) where we’re going
maybe someone born earlier could say more, but i can imagine a history we went through is:
- companies hosting services on their own servers because users don’t have as powerful computers. there’s an element of convenience for the users, but it results in drastically more complexity on the company’s end
- of course complexity is expensive —- companies having to hire infrastructure engineers, security engineers, guaranteeing uptime, and so on. software engineering is hard!
- in order to offset the cost, companies need to extract profit whenever they can, at least until breaking even. this includes selling user data, displaying ads, aggressive a/b testing to increase some metric of activity, decreasing quality, dark patterns, etc. again this isn’t a critique – companies need to make money.
- users end up being pulled, not pushed, to the site. along with the subterranean current (which i’m sure gives barely perceptible form of stress), they don’t own their data. things that they thought were theirs might disappear. they might lose their account. it’s fragile when you’re dependent on something
there’s also the relationship between users. ignoring the user experience or even your data, your relationship with others will always be mediated by a corporation. you are never talking to your peer; you are asking someone to talk to them for you. it’s hard to call it a pro-social network
┌─────┐ ┌─────────────────────────────┐ ┌───┐ │alice├───►│facebook, email provider, etc├───►│bob│ └─────┘ └─────────────────────────────┘ └───┘
currents are helpful when they pull you in the direction you want. but to do so, you need to control the current
convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision
– tools of conviviality
i imagine a future where each household buys a “box”, equivalent to an old landline phone (you only need one). this would be your interface. perhaps the internet is like a pubsub where we all push messages to each other, and we choose what to do with the messages we receive. applications are just interfaces for this network.
the box, collecting all your messages, learning your relationships, would know more about you than most. it could handle any assistant / agent-like tasks. ie automatically building calendars, reminding you of important things, planning and logging your life, helping you out however it can
┌─────┐ ┌───┐ │alice├────────────── messages ──────────────►│bob│ └─────┘ └───┘
i imagine a path that would allow us to break through the current paradigm is:
- users have better computers. i mention some abstract “box” that handles everything, but really that’s just your computer. your phone, laptop, and any other devices could be clients to your computer
- corporations realize they don’t need to host everyone’s data. their expenses would go down which would lower the incentive for bad practices
- users own their data. a company shutting down wouldn’t lose them access to their pictures, applications, messages, and so on
so, what is the “essence” of computing then? i’d say universality. the universality of computing makes it possible to bend it to reflect and amplify just about any kind of ideology or cultural construct. in the recent decades, some ideas have just been so overwhelming that they feel very essential even though they are not. in an alternate timeline, other ideas might be dominant