Month: January 2024

So, so great to get an update from The Convivial Society after a long break. All the forces at play within us and without seem to be centrifugal forces, pulling us apart. I remain interested in understanding the nature of these forces. The critical conversation remains important. But I’m increasingly interested in how we might…

When switching costs are high, services can be changed in ways that you dislike without losing your business. The higher the switching costs, the more a company can abuse you, because it knows that as bad as they’ve made things for you, you’d have to endure worse if you left. For social media, the biggest…

Performance should be a sacred, screen-free place, at least in terms of what the performers are putting out to the audience (there’s no stopping the myriad of phones aimed at the stage by the audience, nor do I care too much about that). But an iPad on a mic stand is immediately distracting, and builds…

Simple wisdom comes out on top, no matter who you are: The most sustainable product is the one you never bought in the first place. Whenever making a new purchase, try to picture where the item will end up after you discard it. Can it be composted, reused, or responsibly recycled? Or would it probably…

Buying a whole chicken, cutting it into pieces and wrestling with the bones, finding ways to really get the most out of every part—that’s enough! It is the antidote to mindless consumption. And while thoughtfulness is not the only requirement of a climate-conscious diet, it is a necessary condition for one. the World Resources Institute…

I think ultimately we’ll be disappointed with federation for all the reasons we’re frustrated with earlier social web systems. People trying to get attention for their ideas, which often are abusive. Now the question is what are the steps to use WordPress as the back-end of a social communication system. Behind the scenes, its database…

Ironically, activist faculty and their conservative critics share the same nihilistic vision of the future of higher education: Both believe that the only valuable forms of research and teaching are those that accomplish something obviously useful. Such views are born of austerity, and they are utterly foreign to me. When I fell in love with…

You can use some of these questions as a guide (and ideally journal around them): • Where am I saying I want to do something or make a change but am not taking any action? • If I am not taking action, is it because I truly don’t want to do it, or because I…

Decentralizing social media can sound like a sort of kumbaya anti-capitalist manifesto: “It’s about openness and sharing, not capitalism, *man*!” In practice it’s the opposite: it’s a truly free market approach to social networking. Mastodon may not be interested in becoming a trillion-dollar company, but there’s no reason there can’t be plenty of those built…

19th December 1995 Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit – all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much…