Dreams
yes… i spent some time thinking through all possible containers for this work. i honestly don’t think full-time art work on this is the right path but also don’t think vc-backed startup has the right incentives either (most of the companies/products i’ve seen that people loved in this space became hated as soon as they were pressured to be sustainable / sustain vc-like growth).
i think the dream sort of arrangement in my mind looks something in between a tools research lab (ink & switch, protocol labs, etc.) and an artist studio / community (sfpc / pioneer works) or something like https://www.blender.org/about/foundation/ in terms of final organization makeup
maybe something like things (https://things.inc/ ) too? but it seems more fun / less sustainable meaningful work like the blender foundation stuff
https://www.are.na/block/18898169
Ongoing Research Overview
- modular networks: what is the most usable, extensible form of data? what is as approachable as JSON but as usable as a spreadsheet, as extensible as a relational database, as distributable as RSS?
- embodied computing: easy persistence / persistent collaborative software / emergent syntax (whole data - where the data is in the representation of it)
- tiny databases / small data / folk databases
- asynchronous real-time collaboration: ghost cursors, website furniture, fingerprints
- forms / form websites
- digital collections / timestamping / logging done via text / streams
- data protocols: DID and hypercore, pubsub, rss, etc.
- small persistent data is key to creating any new kind of “app” or “protocol” or game
- plain text transfer protocol
- embodied computing: easy persistence / persistent collaborative software / emergent syntax (whole data - where the data is in the representation of it)
- folk computing: home-cooked software, how to power a million tiny apps?
- small tools / folk interfaces and APIs / single-purpose websites and apps
- community infrastructure: community server garden, data co-ops, local infrastructure
- prompt for new features
- tiny internets: what does technology that optimizes for community rather than scale look like?
- social protocols: things like spring 83 and activity pub
- web ring evolution, forums, tiny social networks
- publishing protocols, self-publishing, self-syndication
- folk identity / password-less authentication / understandable PGP encryption
- safety via obscurity, intimacy via sharing space, expression via worlds that prompt exploration
- how do people feel safe and empowered to have dreams and hopes for the internet?
- agency-increasing experiences / choreographed education
- how do you design experiences that prompt you to self-discover, “tell the truth but tell it slant,” the medium is the message, visceral and evocative art?
- boku no natsuyasumi and Braid (game) and train board game
- I want software and technology for gathering, hosting and being a guest. I want it to enable us to offer each other gifts and make space for one another and show care in ways that aren’t so demanding or single-channel or limited in expression. ^2c7cb1
- software for meaning-making and self-discovery: things that help you return to ideas, sit with words, linger on memories. things that are the opposite of your todo-list, that resist “optimization” and “efficiency” and “inbox zero”
- e.g. cultivating lists, starting practices and rituals
- embedded attention / situated reminders / setting intention in context
- smile exchange and care packages and time capsules
- bulletin
- tend and ritualized counting
- computing as art and memory and ecosystem
- ascii art / text art / rich media encoded as text
- digital legacy / personal documentarian
- digital natural phenomenon: solar server, fractal generative art, digital decay and entropy
- what sorts of software causes you to pause and slow down and notice the world around you? To become intimate with your way of seeing and experiencing and honor that? ^38a4e4
from Writing List
- html garden and the questions it provokes
- ^2c7cb1
- computing shrines and oakland buddha
- bulletin and sketching out where it came from and where it goes
- small collections and the art of collecting
- found objects and all
- ^38a4e4
- whole data concept and ascii art and why it’s so provoking and how to empower people to create their own folk expressions out of this basic material
- mmm.page and how it enables so much expression
- creating your own apps and prompting for new features and what the future might look like there
- “texture” in software