Hobbyist Academia #30
In a similar way to digital sociology, design is an interdisciplinary lens and layer to how I see the world. It encompasses visual design and aesthetics, physical space design, systems and process design, and experience design. It also naturally intersects with a wider arts and humanities scope: things like print media, book publishing, and various visual arts.
In practice, design can help us make intentional choices in a systematic way. It's how we can use color to bring joy into our homes, create neighborhoods that lend themselves to feeling like a community, and build consumer technology that feels meaningful and connective.
These characteristics of design are important across digital sociology, business, and personal development. What do analog and digital communications look like? How do they create an experience? Is the business model for a product designed to be reliant on selling access to its audience? How can you design your life for both joy and meaning? What role does work play in your life?
Engage and Interact
Purposely Social is a new type of social networking tool that facilitates IRL relationship building to improve your social health. It syncs your schedule and interests with your friends’ schedules and interests to take the stress out of planning your social life.
Lauren Mandy, writer of the Words of Women newsletter, has launched her own line of greeting cards. They’re beautifully designed and beautifully written, featuring meaningful quotes that will give you words when you don’t have them.
Opal is an app that uses technology to give you back control over how you use your devices. Rather than relying on willpower in the face of apps designed to take advantage of human psychology to keep you scrolling, Opal helps you focus and be intentional about how you interact with your digital world.
Read
The team at New_Public recently shared research about Front Porch Forum, a new kind of social media platform that is proving out theories about how to design healthier digital public spaces that have positive real-world impacts on communities. Every post is reviewed by a moderator before it appears on the platform, and advertising slots are offered to local businesses and organizations. The goal is not to maximize readers’ outrage and time spent on the platform, but to provide useful information that facilitates offline, neighborly interactions like borrowing a hammer.
I recently signed up for Ben Lazaroff’s new Staying Human newsletter, an interdisciplinary exploration of how technology is shaping individual identity and sense of self. In the first edition, he discusses deepfakes.
Nat Eliason’s essay about slow habits offers a more sustainable approach to developing new habits and nudging ourselves to change in the direction we want with more ease.
Following the thread of slowing down, a recent edition of idle gaze dives into the ways that living a more unplugged, softer, slower-paced life is the new counterculture.
Linda Liukas shares her experience with the multimodal and interactive book, Playgrounds, and her philosophies on taking up artistic residence in a playground.
Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter is always an excellent read. In a recent edition, he reconsiders productivity tricks meant to maximize accomplishments and turns instead toward asking a feeling question, “What would it mean to be done for the day?”
Attend
Timeleft coordinates dinners with strangers in 180 cities around the world. These dinners offer off-screen opportunities for spontaneous social encounters with people who also signed up to meet new people over a meal.
The Conference 2024 is taking place in Malmö in just a couple weeks. The two day gathering facilitates connections, conversations, and learnings across diverse fields of study to explore the intersection of humanity and technology in the present, the past, and the future.
Save This for Later
A few new books for the To Read list:
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman
Playgrounds by Lillian Davies and Chloe Briggs
For more media recommendations at the intersection of digital sociology, design, business, and personal development, check out The Collection on my website.
[I will receive a small commission should you purchase a book using the Bookshop links included in the newsletter. Bookshop is an Amazon-alternative online bookseller that supports independent bookstores in your local community.]