App as Potluck by Henry's Zoo

This story doesn't aim to spark a revolution in computing, but to showcase what technology could be otherwise: an act of love. (View Highlight)

a custom FYP. (View Highlight)

The image of the machine. (View Highlight)

imaginary (View Highlight)

His three criteria are stability (no pressure to upgrade, migrate, re-learn or upselling, SaaS), transparency (open source, open process, debuggability), simplifi-ability (against feature float/creep, unix-like). (View Highlight)

It is monopolizing technology that attempts to create a totalizing system, one that imposes its own sensemaking. The logic of the machine overrides the logic of its human users. (View Highlight)

tired of working in a stadium. (View Highlight)

I'm tired of feeling like everything must escalate in the direction of an influencer. (View Highlight)

one size fits all nature of GitHub that allows it scale. I'm just realizing a parallel between this form of organization and the convivial tools which Illich describes as "working with us, not for us". (View Highlight)

In maintaining a large project, it always felt like I was working for someone, rather than working with a friend. (View Highlight)

Both a maintainer and user are abstract entities hiding behind GitHub handles and profile pictures, not persons, so it's no wonder maintainers are treated inhumanely, and unfortunately respond in kind. (View Highlight)

So going along with the food theme,
an app can also be a potluck. (View Highlight)

what can be lost is the relation between one another when it's replaced with the relation between people and their tools. (View Highlight)

The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to ‘communicate’ with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use. (View Highlight)

proportionality. There's a mutual bond, not uniform (impersonal) nor domineering (coercive). (View Highlight)

He opens up the possibility to create the relation of a graph (where each individual is a node forming links with other people), rather than a categorization (my family, my tribe, my religion, my people). He means to say that there is no way of knowing ahead of time who his neighbor will be (View Highlight)

the Samaritan didn't ask to blockade the road so that no one could go there anymore and get robbed, or pay for police to monitor the road so no one gets hurt, or set up a system so that he could help everyone there. This is thinking in systems, in abstractions. (View Highlight)

The embodied view of neighbor has quickly become "corrupted", it morphs the freedom of friendship into an obligation. The limits have been broken beyond what is fitting, such that there is no limit at all. (View Highlight)

should ought (View Highlight)

As a candle in the dark, I can still aspire to create beauty that brings others closer. (View Highlight)