Backlash backlash:
The nature of human nature is that it changes. It can not, therefore, serve as a stable basis for evaluating the impact of technology. Yet the assumption that it doesn’t change serves a useful purpose. Treating human nature as something static, pure and essential elevates the speaker into a position of power. Claiming to tell us who we are, they tell us how we should be.
The transcript of a terrific talk on the humane use of technology.
Instead of using technology to replace people, we should use it to augment ourselves to do things that were previously impossible, to help us make our lives better. That is the sweet spot of our technology. We have to accept human behaviour the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be.
An interesting Xerox-PARC-like project dedicated to making a programmable platform out of paper and other physical objects.
A humane dynamic medium embraces the countless ways in which human beings use their minds and bodies, instead of cramming people into a tiny box of pixels.
A wonderful rallying cry for the indie web:
Do it yourself. Strip it down. Keep control. Make it for your community. Don’t do it for the money.
And this is where I start to understand what my friend Rebecca Gates means when she says that technologists and designers have a lot to learn from punk and indie rock. Leave the expensive, large scale, commercial arena rock to Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
We can be The Ramones.
And Bad Brains.
We can press our own records, and run our own labels.
We can make our own spaces based on our own values.
Such a shame that it’s only on Medium—the MOR of online publishing.
Yet another brilliant far-ranging talk from Bret Victor.
I’ve tried to get him to come and speak at dConstruct for the past few years, but alas, with no success.