(2023-06-01) Kissane Tomorrow

Erin Kissane: Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow. Nothing of any importance happens in a building or a town except what is defined within the patterns which repeat themselves. —Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building. At the core of Christopher Alexander’s work is the belief that the shape and character of our spaces cannot help but influence the events that repeat inside them

Over the past 20 years, this is very much what I’ve come to believe about the shape of the things we’ve built online.

I think about the vibrating foil blade every time anyone mentions engagement.

The structures of our network commons have concentrated our responses to the forces already pressing against our livelihoods and children and futures. Within their engagement-optimized interfaces, we’ve built ourselves into a standing wave: Abusive posts became network-wide events that require a response not only from moderating authorities, but from every user.

In this machine, silence transmutes to approval of the worst thing happening

The secret heart of every panopticon is not the all-seeing-eye, but the confessional. Like a god, the machine already knows what we’ve done. We confess to reclaim our own voices.

Here in my body, I want to be more human in service of a less painfully haunted world. I want ways of being together that let us pay our respects and build different kinds of power. I want to practice being free.