These principles were created by hundred and fifty humans in fourty eight hours at Techfestival in Copenhagen.
They..
- Are tools.
- Were made by humans.
- Are for makers, not what's made.
- Meant to be owned.
- Built for engagement, empowerment and regular exercise (take them out for a RUN now and then!).
- Need fresh air and light. These principles will evolve.
- Can be ignored if not useful.
Handle data with care.
Obey the democratic laws. Don't produce nor facilitate work that doesn't obey the laws and regulations. When believing they should be challenged, do so through the democratic institutions that got us here. Civil disobedience is never a tool a generate profits, solely a mean to improve society or protect humans. If democratic laws are being broken, take leadership in changing the course or blow the whistle.
Stop the gold digging. Work towards every startup being long term successful, instead of betting on 1% hitting gold and the rest failing.
Design for digital citizens, not digital consumers.
Tech-enabled power structure must include an accountability mechanism towards all persons affected by this technology.
The planet matters. Let's be conscious about how the digital is real and gets exponentially physical. Our phones, cryptos and AIs are intoxicating the planet, including us. We need to act. Now!
Reinvent our democratic methods and processes around participation and openness it's the most important tech we can work on.
Tech companies are not above us. We, the people, create the rules. In our democracies. Through our institutions. Play by our rules. We're in charge.
Act as if our future depends on your decision. Our decisions have consequences beyond what we see. Our future is the sum of these decisions, even though we don’t know how they add up. So treat every one of them as if it changes everything.
Create a people centred economy. Today, most businesses are ‘task-centred’ because they see value creation in tasks or jobs being done. ‘innovation’ is trying to bring the human element down as much as possible to reduce costs. Innovation becomes the power-saw that the task-centred economy uses to cut down the branch it is sitting on. A people-centred economy will always want to innovate new jobs that make people even more valuable. In the end the focus of being ‘task’ or ‘people’ focussed, is a choice we, the people, make. Let us make the right choice and put people first!
Unify. Stand up for democracy. Technology holds the potential for empowering human beings and further the spread of democracy and humanistic values. At the same time democracy and these values are under threat from populism, fuelled by technology. Divisive and polarising content are rewarded by social platform and their algorithms. Don’t sit back and let democracy be hijacked this way. Chose to promote democracy and humanism where you work and in the technology you build.
Use technologies to evolve society. Technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence are not end goals for society. Big humanity and real wisdom are.
Living being, human, user. Use tech to build resilient systems to let all life flourish on earth and beyond.
Give give give ask. Be kind and pay-it-forward.
Develop kindness. What you do online can have major non-linear impacts. Just like when a butterfly flips its wings in Copenhagen can cause a typhoon in the other side of the world.
Give birth to snow leopards. To a young woman. By the time you read this, humans will be giving birth to endangered species to protect them from extinction. What will this mean for your future, and the future of those you will nurture? Snow leopards live at high altitude, up in the mountains where it is dangerous to put one foot in front of the other. They are not afraid of these conditions, but roam freely there with beauty not destruction. They are adapted to the cold, and remain majestic even in freezing air – skills you will find useful in the arctic realm of technology. Imagine you are a snow leopard, unafraid to step forward, elusive but powerful, stealthy when you need to be but elegant and fluid in your body and mind. Give birth to snow leopards by passing your power and potential on to your kin – feline, human or otherwise.
Don't "Disrupt or die", care.
“failure is not an option.” is a lie. Accept failure! Failure is a positive step of the learning process.
Progress is more than innovation! New is not always better. But it can be. Develop what we need to move forward, not only what we want right now.
We must, and we can make data empower everyone not only give power to the few. Data is our resource. Resources are fundamentally different from processes as we may represent in code. Data work is about gathering this powerful resource to help us know more about the world. We must empower everyone, no matter their background, position in life & society or technical ability, to use this resource to know more, support their lives and make positive changes in the world. Being empowered includes feeling safe because you are protected from abuse. We, in our technical ability, must be respectful that this resource belongs to everyone. Control of this resource is a great responsibility. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, analytics, business intelligence and software are just the uses of data. The processes that we encode within a machine.
Don’t abolish vulnerability with technology, you need it to explore and grow. Being vulnerable is a strength. Not a weakness. It is an ability. It takes courage. This ability makes it possible to be open and aware.
Always build an escape pod in case things don't work out as "Intended".
Don't make users addicts take responsibility for your app: display average usage times before users download it. Be honest about how it might affect users. Be transparent about how it makes money.
Build beautiful businesses that benefit beings around you - come to stay and not to exit. The word beautiful is chosen for a reason: it is not enough that business bring profit. Money alone is a dead metric/currency. Value is a word we have corrupted so much it is now void of value. But we all have an intuitive feeling of what is beautiful and beneficial. Let us build that, let us build it where we are, where we mean to stay, with and for the beings around us. The word beings is chose for a reason: it includes people, but also the planet around them.
Don’t be a tech naive. Technology without public governance will do harm. Responsible technologists invite and engage in democratic processes to align their power with the interest of society.
Demand that investors be held accountable for every £ of capital they invest in new companies. Those who control our monetary resources have a duty to over- see that the innovation which gets funded has a net positive for the human race. With great power comes great responsibility. We’ve become accustomed to measuring VCs by their exits and multiples they distribute to their investors. But the fact is that they are actively creating new companies. With this creation of new entities comes a whole range of second-order consequences as companies scale. We need to demand that VCs factor this into their decision-making, as their choices affect billions of people. VCs will always optimise for power-law returns but push them to do so responsibly. They hold the keys to the castle and humanity is highly dependent on who they’re letting come inside. We need to demand that the powerful VCs are measured on more than just their return.
Don’t let the technology you build inherit your flaws. Be self-aware. Mitigate the impact of your personal traits on the technology and products you create.
Growth is a byproduct, not a goal. Create, work with, and invest in technologies & businesses trans- forming lives for the better, doing good for humanity, building better futures. Optimise for long-term, growth will follow.
Stop glorifying fear of missing out. No more "Interested" functionalities on social media. We need to acknowledge and confront the digital anxiety and depression FOMO creates.
Make tech for democracy. Enhance democracy with tech to allow citizens write laws and to account for social outcomes that companies create.
People before profit. Lead with purpose - the pursuit of purpose. Focus on purpose that connects with people - profit is a side effect.
Say no more often. As engineers, designers, thinkers and builders, we should be critical of the business decisions that fly in the face of human interest. Someone built the software to hide emission numbers on VW cars. Someone built and designed the systems controlling drone bombers. Someone could have said no.
Be frugal live well within your means. Tech desperately needs examples of a more sustainable lifestyle. Being frugal aligns you with the natural world. Being frugal contributes to a more just and equitable society. Being frugal allows you to share more with others.
Don't trust me. Trust your users!
Start ethics debates long before disaster strikes. In medicine, researchers and practitioners have discussed consequences and limitations of technical innovation (I.E. Ivf) early on with society at large. These ethics debates have resulted in measured, reasonable introduction of innovation, geared towards public good, safety, and individual choice. In digital technology, ethical issues are only addressed reactively, in part because tech leaders and lawmakers ignore each other or lack mutual respect. Dialogue must start early on to improve outcomes for all stakeholders.
Improve the world and not just your bank account. Feelings give direction for the rational brain. Do not ignore subconscious - and you will always do the right thing. The more you suppress it the worse consequences can be. No one wants to end life full of regrets about undone things.
Tech is not a job, it's a way of life. Teach our kids about the digital world. Take responsibility for educating the young one's in your field. Build community in your city around your craft. Find the others. Drive your craft and field forward. Engage in your local society's technology decisions and solutions. And work your job.
Dear young one who’s about to start something. You don’t have to always be better, stronger, wiser, faster, richer, ready. Doubts, questions, fears and feelings are welcome – they are human. Your motivation and enthusiasm are the best guns you have, leave the fake facts to the guys without them. Stay real, stay human.
Consider the glue. What is the glue that keeps your community together? Or, rather – what is the glue made of? What’s the mix? Strong doesn’t always equal. Too much of e g a shared enemy might make you strong – but also hard. Too deep of e.G. A shared interest might make you close – but also closed. So keep balance. Every so often, consider the glue.
Create a culture of prioritising longterm incentives. Build products, teams and companies that go beyond short term metrics. Focus on providing value to all your stakeholders, and create a culture that incentives long-term vision, strategies and outcomes.
Macro matters! Build macroscopes not only microscopes! Technology equips with the ability to build tools that give us superpowers, help us see what we normally cant see and make us realize the impact that what we build has on the whole not just the narrow focus we sometimes choose to govern our perception. Mascroscopes give us the superpower of seeing what many decisions and actions look like when added together.
Serve the people not tech. Protect personal data, quit ads, think sustainable, set information free, build open source and be transparent.
Design for contemplation and focus. We've been designing for increasing the time our users spend our products and the amount of times they use it every day. Designing for addicting us to a constant stream of updates. Let's design for contemplation and focus. Focused once a day catching up with your friends instead of loading a photo sharing app +100 times a day.
Offer escapes, then empower returns. Discover opportunities in serving people's desire to escape and their need to return to reality. Optimise for sustainable usage. Resist the pressure to obsess with infinite engagement. Design monetisation from healthy relationships with your products.
Be open about your business model. The underlying business model defines who you are as a company. Have a clear contract with your users about what they give and what they get - money, data, trust. As a tech company it is your responsibility that your users understand this contract.
Love your competitors. You get sharper with competition rather than working in isolation. You produce better ideas and better products. Competition sharpens your appetite. Stay hungry. Monopolies crush innovation. Innovation thrives in the meeting of ideas. Competition is the match-maker of ideas. Be open to new ideas. Allow your competitors to build on your ideas.
Play by the rules. Respect our democracy. Belong and build with us.
Build with people. Not for people.
Build to exist, not to exit.
Build communities for social impact. Together we make the changes happen.
Make business human human instead of b2b/b2c. Let’s build companies that have humans at the core.
The singularity is near, but reality is nearer.
Support quality of life and natural ecosystems with tech. Thinking on three levels: people, cities and planet. Wellbeing, earthly progress, optimised supply chain systems, resilient nature.
Design for self driving humans. Let’s empower humans to not merely be “users” of technology but drivers of technology. Not just the small subset of humans, who are also technologists. But all humans.
Anticipate not only use but abuse. Respect the privilege and power of tech and consider the impact it had in the world good and bad.
Don't give up on progress! Make your work contribute to inclusive and sustainable growth.
Evoke your civic desires. Let us apply everything we learned from the open source movement to the process of reinventing and rekindling humanism and citizenship. They are both still in beta.
Co-operate don't compete. Stand against the competitive individualism of today’s world. Believe in collectively building an internet where information and opportunities can be accessed by all. Do not be driven by a profit motive, but by a belief in the power of solidarity.
Invite your ancestors to the table. Reflect on what they would say about your work and the way you live. Your ancestors chose you to carry out a mission. This comes with great responsibility. Connect with your intuition. It is their creative energy moving through you and guiding you as you serve humanity through technology.
Participate before profit. Investors in technology companies have a responsibility to participate, build and nurture the ecosystems and geographical locations that they invest in not just profit from them.
Talk with a 7 & a 70 year old about the consequences of your work.
Pervasive and ubiquitous technology is here to stay. Getting to know the boundaries of what is technically possible and not is a must.Our relationship to machines (understood as any kind of technology, analogue or digital) reached out of the work- sphere and into the personal space. Change your mindset and learn to accept the machine in you.It will help you highlight your own humanity.
Share your revenue with those who produce value. Today much tech thrives on the active contribution of its users. User created content and code is valuable and should be rewarded.
Don't let their devices steal your time. Buy a watch.
Team before product. Your idea is nothing without the right team to carry it through. A good team culture is your best idea.
Invest curiosity and open ears in your relations. You don’t give community access you gain community support.
Freedom equality transparency. We shall live as equal, any form of governance shall be decentralised and transparent, under the ruling of people. Data and code that could be law shall be free and accessible to all.
Lead with courage, design for wholeness and keep it evolving. Lead with what you stand for rather than satisfying what others expect from us or what is convenient. Design to create a positive effect for everyone who is impacted by what you build. Keep your structures informal as much as you can to allow what you build to evolve bottom up and keep it at human scale.
It is our responsibility to create a world where technology helps humans live more delightful and meaningful lives.
Beware of the cookie monster. Cookies are bad for your health. They make you fat and lazy, and in the end the cookie monster will get you. Lay low and stay healthy.
Navigate the chaotic path to the future wisely. The world is very chaotic. As limited beings we are thrown into this chaos. Our fight or flight response is strongly geared towards flight. Yet only from fighting chaos was progress ever made. The future lies in a kingdom of possibilities. As a technologist we carry the future of humanity in our arms, and the keys to this kingdom in our belt. Which path we travel there is up to us. Choosing the paths through chaos comes with opportunity, but also risk dire consequences. Your responsibility is to navigate the chaotic path to the future wisely. We implore you to take that responsibility very, very seriously.
Be transparent about what your product is made of!
Be wise about what you design. Consequence are of consequence. Make an effort to anticipate the impact and implication your designs have on the world, humanity and individuals.
Be aware! Lift your head up, listen and look around outside of yourself and what you create. To be aware is to be open to understanding your place in the world. Awareness is an acceptance that there are boundaries to who you are. There are boundaries in the world. There are boundaries to what you know and can create and there are boundaries to what you understand. There is a world outside of you. Outside of your circles , your community and outside of our species. Be aware of what happens when you cross boundaries. To be aware requires listening and an openness to what you hear. Awareness is discovery of 'the other', whoever they may be - whatever it may be. The other has a context which is often not your own. Awareness empowers us to translate into this context of the other. Empathy is the skill which allows you to understand needs and feelings. This skill complements your technical ability and will make you more successful. Awareness shows us the skills we must develop and the duties we have to the other.
Promote legislation. Tech is powerful. It can be used for good and bad. Knowing the difference is crucial. Right now, responsibility for separating right from wrong largely falls on tech innovators and their conscience. This is a big problem, as it rewards those with the fewest morals. It gives them an advantage in the market for outperforming ethical competitors. This hurts society, making it less free, open and human. To solve it, we need democratic regulation that ensures that every company competes within the same playing field. All people who understand technology should promote regulation. Doing so will improve society, companies as well as human lives (including our own).
Embrace complexity. But keep it simple.
Limit yourself. Respect the bigger picture. Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. Technology makes the world seem limitless, but there are limits. There is only so much our hearts, minds and our planet can take. Design processes that embrace the greater good not just the individual experience.
Stay humble, stay foolish. Be different. Think different of ourselves. With such huge responsibility in leading global innovation, tech community tends to take itself too seriously and stick to the same old principles. Instead, it should always be in the process of redefining itself and its culture, being open to other communities and listen more, being inspire to redesign beliefs and sense of belonging. Don’t get stuck in our own biases, think of them as the products and services we design: design, develop, test and then just do it again, and again, and again.
Optimise for life – technology exists to serve humanity. Technology is not a job, it’s a responsibility. Are you taking responsibility? Progress is knowing that we have done everything in our power to leave our garden patch a little greener than we found it. Society has a right to expect technologists, companies, governments and private citizens to use technology to serve humanity for the long-term.
Assume positive intent. Work towards "Sharing" trust. This starts with our own actions. How we behave, how we design, how we lead, how we build. Strive for a world that promotes positive intent. Let's happily trade being hurt once for living a life free from paranoia.
As a designer in tech you have an obligation beyond your title, education and function. You are obligated to involve yourself in the problems that exits, not just features that could be. We have far too long been locking ourselves up in teams at our machines, spending more and more time in the frictionless realm of code and screens. We are spending less and less time in the real world. You are not design for the screen, you are creating for humans. Design is something that impacts someone somehow, make your- self aware of the thick and systemic problems and pains, rather than the easy and short terms gains. Don’t fall in love with our own work, you are obligate to fall love other people problems. There are no plugins for empathy and engagement, so you are obligated to go out and empathise with those you are designing for or finding new perspectives. As a designer you have been given super powers to create stuff people need, rather than making them want what you make. You need to beam and hone your skills towards the good of the world. You are obligated to seek this path, if not please step out of the way. Digital technologies have a frictionless lure. You are obligated to understand and create a responsible use of digital materiality and craft. Digital is not like wood or steel, it rather has the human cognition and senses as it is material. You are even more obligated to think of how your work impact the world. Remember where there are users there is also the potential of misuse. Where there is a bespoke user experience there is also a risk of a rise of user addiction. Where there is a backend, there is always something happing behind the scene that people are not seeing or aware of. Be aware of the dark patterns in the code and in the algorithms, it might have unintended consequences. You are not the design. You are a designer. You have an obligation, not just a job. Obligate yourself to engage, to create and to allow for creation, not just for consumption and addiction.
Do what you love and you will work hard every damn day of your life.
Fast is not greater than slow. Design for pause, reflection, and occasional boredom.
There are no likes on gravestones. Design tech for mortals who may die tomorrow.
Tech is here tech is real. Technology is not ‘something’ that happens ‘elsewhere’. It is right here and very real! We think of technology as an ‘unreal’ system due to its synthetic nature, ignoring the fact that it directly influences our physiological and cognitive experience. It is very much real. Even digital experiences impact our interactions & behaviours within public, private and intimate spaces. Once we accept that technology is not a parallel, but an integral part of our physical experience, we will be able to design technology with a new sense of purpose and accountability.
Aspire to create technologies for beginning, not ending. Child and adult learning processes have been imprisoned by measurements, performances, predictions, outcomes, and profit. We refuse this reductive instrumentalisation of learning. As software developers, educators, programmers, teachers, makers, children, and adults, we will aspire to create technologies that will serve as tools for beginning, not ending. For curiosity, not complacency. For living with the world, not merely in it. For helping people engage meaningfully with one another, not isolation. For surprising, not achieving for liberating, not predicting. For mystery, not homogenisation.
Be vigilant. So that the impact of your actions does not exceed your ability to moderate them.
Data isn’t born, it’s made. Data is dumb raw material until we shape it. Do so wisely.
It’s okay to be... Lost. Get comfortable not knowing. Be slow. Explore play be silent. Take your time – the answers will come.
Distribute: wealth · power · jobs and activities happiness · freedom · information. Only technologies which distribute or help people to learn and to get the habit of distributing will contribute to a world in which everyone will get an equivalent share of all the good we make together every day. If you go with the idea of a good distribution, everyone will have space for their personal identity including yourself and remember: decentralised does not always mean well distributed.
Open data for the people. What are you hiding?
Help people shape your world. Make it easy for people to shape your world have an open, transparent feedback mechanism listen to input. Reject the no-reply culture. Welcome scrutiny. Connect even with the inconvenient treat people like humans not just customer people might not always be right but listening is never wrong. In fact, it’s the only way to learn and grow.
Reclaim the word technology. Remember that a pencil, too, is a piece of tech.
Subvert the dominant paradigm. Always question and challenge self-imposed boundaries and principles do not accept the status quo. Always ask ‘why are we doing it this way?’ fail to do so and run the risk of becoming complacent, irrelevant or worse.
Human independence free choice. Look for ways to give people more agency. Agency is the capacity a person has to act independently and make their own free choices. A person who is controlled, manipulated, distracted, under threat or has no margins, will have little agency. Does your work or product create more agency? For whom? Where are you making choices that restrict agency? Where could you powerfully increase agency, especially for those who start with less?
First do no harm. Skin in the game: be accountable for your work, your image and your code. Promote accountability in the social systems you design – balance responsibilities and rights. Don't infantilise “users” by offering them cost-free choices without considering their long-term impact.
Reconnect to reality humanised technology. Technology has to follow social codes that directly contribute to the quality of life of all involved creatures every step of the chain. It has to embody reality instead of driving fictional utopias. Develop with the collective goal of bettering our world. Be critical about the outcome, search for the real essence of our challenges and lastly decide if technology is the answer.
Anticipate human creativity. Knowledge in the future will be the capacity to continuously adapt create flourish and thrive. We are people we are creative.
Would you treat the user differently, if she was your own grandma? Ask yourself how your product affects its users. We should all be more aware of how technology affects people’s body, mind and social sphere. Tech can do good, but can also harm people! Ask yourself: if someone I cared about started using the product, I am building, how would it affect them? And would caring about my user change the way I would build it? Do the grandma-test: would you treat the user differently, if she was your own grandma?
Help me find my own way. I hear you will free me from a life without meaning, I hear your tools will save me from my tedious tasks, that my mundane 9 to 5 will end, that I'll be creative, empowered and change the world. Yet I’m left feeling... Am I not good enough for you. I don't need a priest, messiah or technological superhero. I welcome your inspiration, but not your technological inquisition. Don't tell me; show me how to empower myself. Help me find my own way.
Don't short circuit the human connection. Friendship | love | sex (they're not supposed to be easy all the time). People (especially young ones) are at risk of drowning in a sea of digital options. 'connecting' keeps getting easier, but you can't make a *genuine connection* any less hard to form. Don't let people swipe themselves into emotional isolation. People need something real and warm. Give them something to hold onto.
Apply fair play. Respect code of ethics. Maintain dignity under all circumstances. Respect the competition. Follow the rules and never seek to deliberately break a rule. Give equal opportunity to everyone. Emphasise that doing our best is more important than winning or losing. Experience is more important than who leads and who follows. Recognise good results of the competition. Always maintain dignity, self-control and modesty no matter if you are leading or following. Don't be a bully.
Build from the real world up. We may dream of creating a pathway to a better world, but the stepping-stones are laid down in the ground we all walk on start with today rather than tomorrow start with your neighbourhood rather than the globe. Start with your loved ones rather than your potential customers.
Build better futures rather than better features. Build tools for expanding the horizons, empathy and agency of people. Build tools for people to design the possibility of life flourishing on earth forever.
There are no side-effects, only consequences. Take responsibility for the unintended outcomes, not just credit for the intended.
Every day, talk to someone new. We tend to surround ourselves with the like-minded. Even more so in the workplace, where we oftentimes adhere to the same visions and procedures, problems and solutions. We say yes to the same things. It’s bad for business. After all, when everyone are on the same page, who will turn the cover? But our responsibility goes much wider than business. Your details might be someone else’s dream. And our dreams might be someone else’s dystopia. Allow yourself to feel the power of the no, even if at first it feels inconvenient. Every day, learn something new. Talk to politicians twice your age. To people on the street. To activists and academia, kids and competitors. To someone who looks like you, but especially to those who don’t.
Move fast to fix things. When something is broken we fix it fast! Especially if we have caused it.
Help build the digital welfare system. Nobody should be digitally poor let’s builds a welfare system to make sure no one is left behind.
Design for humanity. We are a community that exerts great influence. So far we've designed for humans, for what we call users and for generating profit in our companies. It's time to design for humanity. With love and humility of the challenge of doing it. Respecting that it's an all new challenge. In the end, our reward will be to know that we have done everything in our power to leave our garden patch a little greener than we found it.
Be skeptical. Solutionism is not the solution it's an illusion. We need to challenge the solutionism embedded in current tech and design systems not everything should be easy or simple [embrace debate, confusion and contradictions] life is complex and that's fine.
Take time to think. The tech world is fast paced. We often run from meeting to meeting and focus on completing tasks. We rarely find time for deep thinking about the issues that are important for long-term success of our companies. Take the time to think about culture, social impact and other things that you know are important but which don't seem urgent at the moment.
Love governance. By definition a society is shared. By everyone, for everyone. You play a role. So do others. Be humble. Politicians are experts too, but not at ict. Ask the politicians, pressure them, to be part of the solution. Make them create a tech governance structure. Make them legislate digital rights.
Solve an actual need. Tech is a tool. Not the starting point, or an end in itself. Identify an actual need and apply the appropriate solution. Test. Learn. Iterate.
Dare to grow slowly. Exponential growth is a vc's wet dream – not yours. Organic growth has led to outstanding businesses: think lego. Be prepared to stick around and build a legacy with value for society.
Be worthy of trust. Find out what it means to people, including yourself, and regularly review your worthiness of that trust.
Make transparency meaningful. Not cognitively painful. Make your transparency communication as sincere, clear and user friendly as you aspire your products and services to be.
Take play seriously. When we respect joy and exploration we strengthen our creative muscles. Curious play inspires ideas we wouldn’t have found any other way. It unlocks joyful tomorrows.
Don't let software eat the world.
Dare to put your self into your life's work. There is a disconnect between our personal and professional lives. We say and create things we think other people want to hear and see. The world becomes compliant. The more we put who we are and what we care about into our work the more we will realise the need for diverse cultures because our own diverse voices will finally be heard.
Be nobody. Instead of asking why nobody is doing this, we can be the nobody and start doing it.
Forget principles. This is all a mindset, not a rule set. If they don’t feel true to your heart, if they don’t resonate with your whole being, only take what works for you and leave behind the rest. Write yours.
Let’s try. Often we get hang up in overthinking things and arguing with others endlessly, creating conflict & adversity. Technology is giving us the ability to prototype ideas and build through iterations.
The road to digital hell is paved with good intentions.
Use technology to give people a chance to be unique. Some of us grew up in an analog world were each path we took, each book we read, each song we loved and each idea we considered defined our identity. The digital world may not give us the same luxury, when machine can decide for us, and when an infinity of experience are just one click away. Inspired by the slow food movement, the slow web is another approach to building things, with the intention of preserving at all cost our own uniqueness.
Design to affirm planetary ecologies. We are connected to nature, one another and our environment through complex, nodal networks in myriad ways both known and unknown. Design to reveal and reinforce these connections. Design regenerative ecologies.
Build tools and enable spaces for collective dreaming. We need to reclaim our ability to dream in large groups, to dream together about what the kind of future we want and where technology does or does not fit in, in that future. We need to (radically) expand the range of what we believe / imagine is possible through the act of collective dreaming.