social fractals
So, things are shifting in our society and our world. They have been. And there are many areas where they are coming to a head – some delayed, some pushed forward, and some emerging. As someone who has been watching information patterns develop, it’s felt like chasing a rope – weighted by who knows what, it’s so far out of sight – over a cliff’s edge, trying to grab it to try to stop it.
Because, from my point of view, all these things are telegraphed in the information. Not in terms of evolving patterns, but in terms of this is where they said they were going to do this and this is the law they put in place, and these are the things to expect to come from them, and this frustration comes out of the whole “moating” and “growth UX” patterns and technofascism is too tempting to people who have already consolidated enough power/money/wanted-attention that they fear losing it, and already have these tools.
Watching people not believe until the things came to pass has been a special pain. Seeing people rail when certain things come to pass gives me hope. What I’m hearing most is that the information has been so muddied by “interested parties” that people who care but aren’t in the middle of it, don’t know who/what to believe. Our information environment doesn’t fit how we were taught.
This isn’t where I like to spend my time, but sometimes some of these information patterns won’t stop banging on the inside of my head until I write. So I write, and put them here. Because maybe, just maybe, I might give someone enough tools, enough confidence in their own information literacy, and enough overlap with what they are mentally labeling, “surely, no one is that…” that we can start making the bets that the greatest portion of humanity can actually live within.
List of articles tagged with or that call to or send for “social fractals”
Articles tagged
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Information technology design ethics
An ethics model built on an expectation of broad acceptance.
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The weight of our decisions: designing isn't simple
A habit of intentional design is the gravity point of building trust for what's new. Humanist design is the gravity point of real loyalty.
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Garbage in, garbage out
Truth is hard, and it's not made easier by how we talk about it and appproach it.
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The funky variability of meaning as a lesson in taxonomy
Taxonomy discussions might be boring according to some perspectives, but they are periodically necessary. Originally published on Medium.
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Variability and infrastructure
Done well, information architecture will live longer than the relevance of the raw data. As data shifts, as our data substrate and understanding grows, as ideologies are finally seen and sloughed: the information architecture needs to change with it.