Tag: aralbalkin

The ever long line of minorities taken advantage of in Silicon Valley

Club house

I saw the story about Clubhouse recording conversations (Found via @aral@mastodon.ar.al of #smalltech).

1. New VC-backed startup enters the scene
2. People flock to it
3. They discover it’s a surveillance capitalist (and still have no clue what that is)
4. They’re shocked (because, see 3)
5. It’s too late, they’re too big and they’ve exited
6. Goto 1

Likewise, I am not shocked or surprised. Its surveillance capitalism in full effect. Worst still, they made their base off the back of minorities like black creators, which is another nasty trend in Silicon Valley. Once the mainstream pile in, the original creators are dashed to the wind or forcefully rejected.

This narrative needs to change…

Rethinking the user experience in age of distributed networks

Planetary.socialIt was David who reminded me to blog about planetary.social, which recently was announced on twitter by Tom Coates.

I feel this is one of many to come. Not another social networks, but the idea of rethinking the advantages of decentralised, federated and distributed networks.

When I saw Aral’s talk a long time ago at Thinking Digital, I have been wondering why don’t more designers look at the advantages and rethink them into completely new user experiences?

Imagine:  Decentralised, Its not a bug its a feature

I like what planetary has done with the FAQ page. You would also expect them to shy away from the underlying networking technology of Scuttlebutt (which is hard to explain to people use to centralised models of social networks). They took the underlying technology and turned it into a competitive business advantage, without breaking the ethos/promise of the technology.

So you got Aral, Tom and many more examples coming out of the Indieweb movement including Aaron

This is the future… Good ethical technology, good ethical design and good ethical data practices = Great new user experiences.

This might sum up the talk I’m thinking about for Agile Manchester 2020.

https://twitter.com/agilemanc/status/1219991870899675136