booth 2

topic: (ramble): software as drugs and online intimacy gradients? okay. here's something I've been thinking about a great deal. tldr: software are drugs for a body, apps are workshop-less tools, and forums are like bulletin boards. -- I miss internet forums. I miss spaces for contemplative, open discussion. I want to talk about israel and palestine, but I want a thoughtful, curious, meaningful back-and-forth. I want to do it in a group setting. I want to do it in a longform way, where people are interested in listening to each other. I don't want a zoom call, a text thread, a tweet bunch; I'd like to hear a series of thoughtful, considered thoughts between people. I miss spaces for that kind of thinking; I dearly want it; I want to hear what other people are genuinely thinking; I want to meet each other in the space of thought, language, emotion, and to really ponder together; I want to think about what someone has written during the day and come back to the computer with a remark; I want to ponder, to mull over something a friend has shared with me, and to respond further. To deeply try to understand together, to explore, to be in thought together. I think I'm fortunate to have tasted the internet, or corners of the internet, where this was such; where discussion and debate was part of the culture of an environment. where do you do this here? where do you go to talk deeply about an issue? I miss a forum. -- I can't help but convincingly say that it's the architecture, the affordances, the dynamics of our online spaces that are at fault. the spaces we have are horrible, or at least, horrible for the kind of conversation I'd like to have. a room full of chairs, circling around a table. soft lighting, some snacks, a discussion. what is at stake here, folks? what do we care about? what are we here to say, to talk about? that's what I miss. -- there's a good analysis to be done of this; the shape of twitter or instagram or bluesky or tiktok or youtube or all of these online 'spaces'. do we have online spaces any more? is youtube or tiktok a space? maybe a polemic is that: at some point, the internet abandoned the spatial metaphor. we went from mySPACE to tiktok, space to time, from a locale, with proximity, presence, trust, to a kind of an amorphous mindset, driven by the abstract dynamics of an interface design strategy more focused on some amorphous understanding of 'intuitive' and 'flat'. further polemic: flat ui interface design (aka post-skueomorphism ios) is the apostle of an efficiency-driven approach to technology. through aesthetics, efficiency (in the form of learned human behavior patterns) masquerades as 'intuitiveness'. in 2013, moving away from skeumorphism threw away a crucial aesthetic language that also enabled the movement away from thinking of the internet as textual 'spaces'. simultaneously, websites became product-ized (is it any coincidence that developers started calling pages 'web apps'?), approaching the language of purchaseable discrete objects, tools, devices, in the way that apple formulated the 'app store'. -- or maybe: in an app mentality, a piece of software is a tool, something you pick up, use. incredibly helpful, and collectible; it's as if you gain superpowers. but the tool is picked up and used by one bare hand, and one hand only. and moreover, you have no workspace, no workbench, no studio. you have all the tools in the world, but your space must be kept immaculate. naturally, your tools don't make a mess. this also means that they can't change very much. in a software mentality, software is a drug. how else would you have computer viruses if your computer wan't a body that could be infected? remember running shareware apps that would do strange things to your computer? change the specs? hack your startup screen? get exposed, get infected, and horror of horrors - you might have to reformat your computer, start all over again. your computer is a living thing, a blobby delicate thing to take care of, monitor the health of, with occasional antivirus checks. but with software, you change your computer entirely, morph it, and it shapes to become something anew. (I would argue that the computer can become a witch's familiar of sorts, or can morph at the speed of the psyche, adapting to be more like who you are...) in a forum mentality, the internet is a space, or a bulletin board. people mill around, looking at the board together. there's a writing table nearby, and people are busy writing furiously at a table, then running to the board to pin up their most recent response. a murmur ripples through the crowd. someone with a furrowed brow steps over to the writing table, presumably to craft their response, in turn. -- I'm most interested in this not just as analysis but because I care about what's being written, and what kind of thought is being present. how do you think about things together, on the internet? I'm hoping that this experiement of a shared website makes it possible. there's some intention that goes into editing a file, making a git commit and pushing it to repo. but having written the above, the interface matters. I'd like it to feel like writing. the idea of a writing table, where you mull over a draft, I think is a crucial one. first, the writing is private. then, it is shared. it is shared by those who are already present -- who have made it back specifically in order to stand in a space and contemplate together. I wonder what kind of interface might be possible or necssary to craft this kind of feeling. how do you design a foyer? I wonder what kinds of language is necessary to articulate these spaces. what kind of diagrammatic representation. a pattern language but for online spaces, or what manuel castells calls, a 'space of flows'. a program diagram for online spaces? maybe the movement through a space is a plan? maybe you see the movement, as a diagram? maybe I'm looking to make intimacy gradients (https://www.iwritewordsgood.com/apl/patterns/apl127.htm) possible on the web, because I'm looking for ponderous, deep, meaningful conversation, and believe that it arises through trustful conversation, and that trustful conversations are only possible in spaces that have an intimacy gradient. does any of this resonate? thanks for reading through this wall of text. - Dan (10/28/23 00:20, Brooklyn, NYC)