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1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 03:05:55 EDT Strypey

   About 20 years ago I read 'Small Is Beautiful', E. F. Schumacher's 1973 economic manifesto on what he called "intermediate technology". This fits neatly with the "slow and small solutions" principle of #permaculture design. Folks in the movement talk a lot about #AppropriateTechnology, and I've been thinking for a long time about how to apply these concepts to the design of communication technology:
   http://web.archive.org/web/20170409211024/https://permaculture.org.nz/content/web-team-coordinator-end-contract-report

   1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 03:08:10 EDT Strypey

      in reply to

      Good to know I'm not the only one applying the "slow and small solutions" principle to digital technology:
      https://ar.al/2019/03/04/small-technology/

      1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 03:20:01 EDT Strypey

         in reply to

         @aral could I suggest an addition?

         > "Is owned and controlled by individuals ..."

         ... *and our communities*

         The #NeoLiberal myth of the atomized, sovereign individual was a crucial part of the sale pitch for the centralized "social media" #DataFarms, which claimed it was providing a "democratic" platform for "peer-to-peer" interactions between them. #SmallTech needs to assert that cooperation is essential to individual freedom, and sovereignty is a team sport, to paraphrase #DougRushkoff.

         1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 04:11:10 EDT Strypey

            in reply to

            @aral also I totally agree that #UX matters a lot, but this ...

            > We do not arrogantly expect people to put in undue effort to learn our tools. We invest undue effort ourselves in making them intuitive and easy to use.

            ... seems to contradict this ...

            > It is not built by ... “developers” for “users"

            1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 04:12:04 EDT Strypey

               in reply to

               @aral Also, this ...

               > It is not built by smarter humans for dumber humans

               ... is a strawman. Unless you can link to examples in the wild of developers arguing that people act as users because they're dumb, rather than because they specialize in something other than the nuts and bolts of digital tools?

               1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 04:59:04 EDT Strypey

                  in reply to

                  @aral I don't agree that "user" is an othering term. Users are the people who need things like copyleft licenses to protect our interests from developers or owners who are unethical or incompetent. Whenever we use tech we didn't build, and there is a potential power difference between us and the people who built it, we are users. Even the most experienced programmers play the role of users (unless they've had time to read and fully understand all the code in every piece of software they run).

   2. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 14-Mar-2019 12:36:20 EDT Strypey

      in reply to

      Investment capital tries to make digital platforms achieve "scale" as a #biomimicry of cancer, making small things grow forever at exponential rates. If we're going to mimic anything in the natural world, it ought to be the fungal mycelium that connects to the roots of all the plants in a forest, and exchanges resources between them. A mutually beneficial network, loosely joining many small things, which becomes more than the sum of its parts. In other words, #federation.