Welcome, or welcome back to our now monthly Tuesday Open Thread.
Last week was quite the whiplash and our immune systems still haven’t processed being yanked around like that. First there was the deluge from the Facebook Papers née Files; and in the midst of chewing on that, we got the Metaverse feature-length hype video.
It’s hype, because it’s speculative—not yet possible. But speculation done right can hold a special kind of power over our imaginations. So, dear readers, momentarily putting aside all our feelings about Facebook, Meta, Whatever, tell us:
What makes you hopeful about the future?
In this moment when Facebook looks both fragile and all-powerful, speculative and unimaginative, imagination is a superpower. Those who dare to imagine—vividly, and in detail—and attract energy and enthusiasm to their imagined visions of what’s next, are likely to define it.
We are assuming that you, like us, are looking for more flourishing places on the internet. We want this to be one of those places! Please treat others with openness, generosity and respect.
I am most heartened when I see people asking tough questions and thinking about who benefits versus who is potentially left behind. The imagination for a lot of what may come in the digital future can often feel entirely focused on the people who are already involved in building it (those with more money, technical expertise, men, non-people of color). I'm hopeful that more people will ask these important questions and that we'll be able to build things online with broader communities in mind and involved. –Joi
Hope = more and more of us are deciding to direct their business (and their life) in the direction of harmony with other people, animals, and the rest of the natural world.
There is a lot of distraction out there, a lot of misinformation, but simultaneously people are able to build genuine and deep connections across social boundaries and national borders... a knife can be used to cut bread or to hurt... I am hopeful when I see people co-creating a culture that regenerative... A
I'm hopeful that even with the considerable churn and uncertainty in tech journalism, we have great reporters at different news organizations willing to work together towards a common goal, like with the recent impromptu consortium-ish group that made the Facebook Papers. –Josh
After being off all social media for the past month, I recently started using an app called W1D1 that prompts users to complete daily creative challenges. I'm reminded that technology can be fun and nourishing when it is not designed to sell ads or data.
I'm hopeful that we've learned a few things since the earnest enthusiasm and ignorance of the early social media days and that we -- every day people or users, makers or employees, etc. -- will make ourselves heard, by where we choose to work and where we choose not to work, by where we choose to lay down digital roots ... and essentially by asking for more from the institutions that we rely on. And like Melanie mentioned, those fall colors have been ~magical~.
-🌳 Revisiting wisdom from nature: Deep in a few books on natural systems and it's been so refreshing to immerse non-human perspectives more intentionally. It's encouraging to see what we can learn about cooperation, community, and communication from organic systems.
(📚 Entangled Life, Finding the Mother Tree, Braiding Sweetgrass, The Bird Way)
- 💬 A shift in language: There's been a subtle but marked shift away from the typical capitalist patois— and more centering of language around care, healing, repair. While it is yet to be seen whether this will shift policies writ large or if it will be social-washed, it gives me hope to see this softening of rhetoric. Language opens up new ways of thinking, being.
Everyday sources of hope: the return of dinner parties, long wandering walks, and fall colors.
Kia ora. I'm working on a literature review at the moment (alright, procrastinating in this very second!!). My research is about supporting new mothers to create intentional smartphone habits at the transition to parenthood. Unconscious smartphone use in the presence of infants is associated with negative implications for mother, for baby, and for the social synapse, ie their relationship. ANYWAY, the HOPE: Because of the way my referencing software has produced the list of thousands and thousands of possible studies, I have spent the last couple of weeks moving backwards through time, screening the titles of various research projects in reverse chronological order. What gives me hope is that the modern research seems to reflect an increasing understanding of these risks to child development (in academia, at least, although there is a gap that needs bridging to get the knowledge out of the university libraries and into the living rooms of the world ... I'm working on it in my own wee way!!). Papers from even a decade ago seem cringingly Pollyanna - much keener to emphasise the cool bits about tech without considering the risks to babies, the persuasion/distraction of their parents, the data being harvested from both parent and child. I am hopeful that people might yell ENOUGH!! and then go outside & play.
“collectively held and performed visions of desirable futures…animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology”.
For me this work includes applying insights related to ecology (e.g., the facilitative role of mycorrhizal networks), cultural evolution (e.g., STS transitions, Multi-Level Selection), political economy (e.g., Ostrom's work related to commoning), and open science to the participatory development and governance of online tools, platforms, and networks.
I'm excited about DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACE above the webpage. We're in usability testing for a new service called Canopi that creates digital public space above any webpage. It'll first be available as an SDK that site owners can install called Canopi Enterprise. It enables visitors to enter the Canopi (i.e., a side bar) where visitors can see each other, participate in a page chat, and initiate a private chat. Later, will be available as an extension whereby by users access Canopies over any webpage. https://presencebrowser.com
I'm hopeful about the emerging companies using technology, networks, and data in support of women's health -- an area that has been neglected for too long.
I'm hopeful that this awakening, and unearthing, of the intended and unintended consequences of social platforms is slowly but steadily leading to a permanent change in the landscape. For many years the balance in this asymmetric game theory example was overwhelmingly in favor of playing along at the expense of companies selling our data, the manipulation of our own base behaviors and the reduction of substantive conversation. The perceived value was too great, and the shift of one individual wouldn't make enough of a dent.
Fortunately, we now see the tide change from consumers choosing to shift away from the Facebooks of the world, from new companies daring to imagine by providing alternatives, regulation and academia producing clearer articulations of damage incurred, and from new technologies that enable novel forms of engagement. As with all important evolutions or 'fate', it is a function of both timing and desire. The multitude of factors are fatefully converging in a positive way!
It's exciting to see new entrants into the market chip away at the social media 'starter pack' that so many companies employed over the last 15 years. As I work on this problem with my company, I am also grateful that we have references like New Public to engender the feeling of being a part of a wave of change. Thanks for everything your team is doing :+1:
I'm pleased to have a bunch of links to check out from the rest of this thread so thank you for that! I have two thoughts about the answer, number one: I'm enthralled with the potential of deep immersion in non-physical spaces. When we got Oculus Quests for my library system, I was able to take one home and play with it; my overriding thought was how engrossing it was. The rest of the world completely disappeared (until I got to a border). I hold out hope that creating that kind of experience will not be the sole purview of huge companies -- that there will be open-source tech available, and entry points for people with diverse skills and experiences to collaborate on creating this theatre of the mind as a bridge between physical space and non-physical spaces. It would be an ideal world if everyone could participate in breaking the fifth wall.
The second, potentially related, hope is that because this bridged future is programmable, physical and psychological affordances for all abilities and space together-apart for points-of-view virtuous and vile would be built as a matter of course, and adapted as humans change. I'm an optimist, so I see a programmable future as one where we can leverage human-computer interaction, hard-coding altruism into AI, inclusion into interfaces, and a tacit permission to heed that beaten-down little voice that tells us to stop death-scrolling and disconnect.
Seeing a lot of people construct new systems that think beyond the dynamics of 19th-century democracy or current capitalist markets ~ eli
I am most heartened when I see people asking tough questions and thinking about who benefits versus who is potentially left behind. The imagination for a lot of what may come in the digital future can often feel entirely focused on the people who are already involved in building it (those with more money, technical expertise, men, non-people of color). I'm hopeful that more people will ask these important questions and that we'll be able to build things online with broader communities in mind and involved. –Joi
Hope = more and more of us are deciding to direct their business (and their life) in the direction of harmony with other people, animals, and the rest of the natural world.
There is a lot of distraction out there, a lot of misinformation, but simultaneously people are able to build genuine and deep connections across social boundaries and national borders... a knife can be used to cut bread or to hurt... I am hopeful when I see people co-creating a culture that regenerative... A
I'm hopeful that even with the considerable churn and uncertainty in tech journalism, we have great reporters at different news organizations willing to work together towards a common goal, like with the recent impromptu consortium-ish group that made the Facebook Papers. –Josh
After being off all social media for the past month, I recently started using an app called W1D1 that prompts users to complete daily creative challenges. I'm reminded that technology can be fun and nourishing when it is not designed to sell ads or data.
I'm hopeful that we've learned a few things since the earnest enthusiasm and ignorance of the early social media days and that we -- every day people or users, makers or employees, etc. -- will make ourselves heard, by where we choose to work and where we choose not to work, by where we choose to lay down digital roots ... and essentially by asking for more from the institutions that we rely on. And like Melanie mentioned, those fall colors have been ~magical~.
What's giving me hope?
-🌳 Revisiting wisdom from nature: Deep in a few books on natural systems and it's been so refreshing to immerse non-human perspectives more intentionally. It's encouraging to see what we can learn about cooperation, community, and communication from organic systems.
(📚 Entangled Life, Finding the Mother Tree, Braiding Sweetgrass, The Bird Way)
- 💬 A shift in language: There's been a subtle but marked shift away from the typical capitalist patois— and more centering of language around care, healing, repair. While it is yet to be seen whether this will shift policies writ large or if it will be social-washed, it gives me hope to see this softening of rhetoric. Language opens up new ways of thinking, being.
Everyday sources of hope: the return of dinner parties, long wandering walks, and fall colors.
Kia ora. I'm working on a literature review at the moment (alright, procrastinating in this very second!!). My research is about supporting new mothers to create intentional smartphone habits at the transition to parenthood. Unconscious smartphone use in the presence of infants is associated with negative implications for mother, for baby, and for the social synapse, ie their relationship. ANYWAY, the HOPE: Because of the way my referencing software has produced the list of thousands and thousands of possible studies, I have spent the last couple of weeks moving backwards through time, screening the titles of various research projects in reverse chronological order. What gives me hope is that the modern research seems to reflect an increasing understanding of these risks to child development (in academia, at least, although there is a gap that needs bridging to get the knowledge out of the university libraries and into the living rooms of the world ... I'm working on it in my own wee way!!). Papers from even a decade ago seem cringingly Pollyanna - much keener to emphasise the cool bits about tech without considering the risks to babies, the persuasion/distraction of their parents, the data being harvested from both parent and child. I am hopeful that people might yell ENOUGH!! and then go outside & play.
I've been inspired to see how many people in my city (New York) have started riding bikes in the last two years!
I find some hope in what I'm seeing emerge and converge around new "socio-technical imaginaries" (https://steps-centre.org/pathways-methods-vignettes/methods-vignettes-sociotechnical-imaginaries/) which explicitly center health, equity, inclusion, and solidarity, rejecting socio-technical systems (STS) which are sociopathic in nature.
One useful definition of STI (Jasanoff, 2015):
“collectively held and performed visions of desirable futures…animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology”.
For me this work includes applying insights related to ecology (e.g., the facilitative role of mycorrhizal networks), cultural evolution (e.g., STS transitions, Multi-Level Selection), political economy (e.g., Ostrom's work related to commoning), and open science to the participatory development and governance of online tools, platforms, and networks.
Examples include the platform cooperative movement, multi-stakeholder networks, agroecological research networks, and solidarity economy ecosystem building. All things I've been exploring, cataloging and reflecting on here: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4284229/socio-technical_ecosystems_and_solidarity_food_systems/
I'm excited about DIGITAL PUBLIC SPACE above the webpage. We're in usability testing for a new service called Canopi that creates digital public space above any webpage. It'll first be available as an SDK that site owners can install called Canopi Enterprise. It enables visitors to enter the Canopi (i.e., a side bar) where visitors can see each other, participate in a page chat, and initiate a private chat. Later, will be available as an extension whereby by users access Canopies over any webpage. https://presencebrowser.com
I'm hopeful about the emerging companies using technology, networks, and data in support of women's health -- an area that has been neglected for too long.
I'm hopeful that this awakening, and unearthing, of the intended and unintended consequences of social platforms is slowly but steadily leading to a permanent change in the landscape. For many years the balance in this asymmetric game theory example was overwhelmingly in favor of playing along at the expense of companies selling our data, the manipulation of our own base behaviors and the reduction of substantive conversation. The perceived value was too great, and the shift of one individual wouldn't make enough of a dent.
Fortunately, we now see the tide change from consumers choosing to shift away from the Facebooks of the world, from new companies daring to imagine by providing alternatives, regulation and academia producing clearer articulations of damage incurred, and from new technologies that enable novel forms of engagement. As with all important evolutions or 'fate', it is a function of both timing and desire. The multitude of factors are fatefully converging in a positive way!
It's exciting to see new entrants into the market chip away at the social media 'starter pack' that so many companies employed over the last 15 years. As I work on this problem with my company, I am also grateful that we have references like New Public to engender the feeling of being a part of a wave of change. Thanks for everything your team is doing :+1:
- Max B
I'm pleased to have a bunch of links to check out from the rest of this thread so thank you for that! I have two thoughts about the answer, number one: I'm enthralled with the potential of deep immersion in non-physical spaces. When we got Oculus Quests for my library system, I was able to take one home and play with it; my overriding thought was how engrossing it was. The rest of the world completely disappeared (until I got to a border). I hold out hope that creating that kind of experience will not be the sole purview of huge companies -- that there will be open-source tech available, and entry points for people with diverse skills and experiences to collaborate on creating this theatre of the mind as a bridge between physical space and non-physical spaces. It would be an ideal world if everyone could participate in breaking the fifth wall.
The second, potentially related, hope is that because this bridged future is programmable, physical and psychological affordances for all abilities and space together-apart for points-of-view virtuous and vile would be built as a matter of course, and adapted as humans change. I'm an optimist, so I see a programmable future as one where we can leverage human-computer interaction, hard-coding altruism into AI, inclusion into interfaces, and a tacit permission to heed that beaten-down little voice that tells us to stop death-scrolling and disconnect.