But maybe when the crash comes it’ll look like the dotcom crash: A Pets.com or two gets razed to the ground, but the new infrastructure remains, and we humans spend years—decades—weaving it into our systems. I was there for the dotcom crash. I could barely make rent, but it was delightful. I attended tech salons at people’s apartments. The price of admission was a six-pack. I switched to Linux and no one cared. I blogged day and night, as free as a bee. All I could do was read O’Reilly books, learn to code, and hang with friends. What a slice of heaven. And tech became less magical—more normal, more boring. Not driving culture, but reflecting it.
I hope we will either begin to detach ourselves from instant tech or find ways to use tech more intentionally to deliver a more immersive experience. To give us back time… porous time. Time to spend with a piece of art. Time to listen deeply. Time to world build.
“What I love about pencils is the balance they strike: you can geek out on materials, production, or mark-making, and yet some of the best pencils being made will only run you a dollar or two. So you don’t have to sweat lending one out or losing one.”
“There seems to be a certain essence in us that we must allow to guide us through life. If we defy this compass, we can end up in places we don’t belong. But if we trust it, follow it, we might do something as grand as fulfilling our purpose.”
Seer, “the built environment itself is, for all intents and purposes, becoming a gigantic archive, at all scales, forensically recording every event that occurs within it, with few or no options for opting out.” Also, BLDGBLOG is still alive.
Google Fonts organized by vibe, even if fonts aren’t your thing, visit to see all the little cursors flying around the Figma canvas.
“In many ways the Light Phone III is a more mellow act of defiance, because it can pass as a regular smartphone, when in the hand. The camera lens peeks out in a recognizable way right above the palm, and the foreshortened size isn’t obvious at first. Whereas the Light Phone II was a clear if meek middle finger stuck up at smartphone addiction, the Light Phone III is more like the bird that you slowly crank up out of your fist—it takes a second to get it.”
“I often wonder about the costs of the “digital echo.” What is the psychological cost of knowing that your actions aren’t just your own, but create information that can be observed and analyzed by others? As more aspects of our lives generate digital echoes, they force an ambient awareness of being perpetually witnessed rather than simply existing.”
“Meanwhile, my little home-cooked apps each do the one thing they are supposed to do, sparkle-free. These apps are substantially finished the day I “launch” them, and, unlike modern commercial software, they are allowed to just: be finished.”
The new watch we’re building basically has the same specs and features as Pebble, though with some fun new stuff as well 😉 It runs open source PebbleOS, and it’s compatible with all Pebble apps and watchfaces. If you had a Pebble and loved it…this is the smartwatch for you.
Why We’re Bringing Pebble Back
I’m so in!
The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality.
From The Anti-Social Century. Emphasis mine.
It is an interesting feature of stories and fiction that they resist summary. You cannot read a summary of Anna Karenina and somehow stockpile its pleasures and charms. Narrative resists compression.
Resist Summary
a recurrent theme is a fatigue with the style of self-narration that the platforms encourage — which, whether we realize it or not, has been heavily influenced by brand storytelling logics. We talk about ourselves like we’re products.
the best defense, the most meaningful work, the best preparation you can do at the level of an individual life is to boost your local resilience. To become a person of place. To connect with the people and land where you live. This is what we’re built to do.
From the Paynter Jacket Co. in 2020, but may be just as useful “care” guidelines for now. I’d add “Spend time with old friends” to the list as well. I was lucky enough to do that this past weekend and can say it recharges the batteries.
it’s okay if you just pick one thing you really care about, and it’s okay if that thing is “being a good friend” instead of “maximizing your potential”
An illustrated guide to science-backed mood boosters. A zine about reclaiming your life from digital technology. A tool for searching independent websites. A collection of the “best” marketing headlines on the internet. Over the Garden Wall’s 10th anniversary stop motion short. Max Vogel Gonzalez’s illustrations. An experiment with giving out potatoes to trick or treaters. A concept to break procrastination. Some objects I covet: Nike C1TY “Surplus” shoes, El Oso Bear Tee, the Kobo Clara Colour, and the book Assembling Tomorrow.
Any code I’ve written, any glib digital creation, disappears into the infinite feed. But a playground will stubbornly stand for the next twenty years, pointing to big ideas in computer science. It’s something I think about often.
