Thread by @danlatorre

Just saw www--arc.com via @WeAreNew_Public -- oof so many ahistorical & media literacy discipline errors in this. This is why Postman warned us: “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?” 🧵

The Libertarian/anarcho capitalist bias of Silicon Valley to redefine privatized space as #publicspace is a threat to publicness, commons, democracy etc. It seems often unquestioned as so many lose contact with actual public spaces in cities. A trance in neo-feudalist simulacra.

This change in language to make virtual extended simulations of place experience be equivalent or reified over embodied real community places, is also core to anarcho-capitialism's anti-democratic eco-fascist worldviews.

Because anarcho-capitalists control most of the online platforms, their algorithms, and money behind conferences & groups it's easy to see why their ideas percolate & replicate in watered down uncritical less experienced groups.

History: in the late 90s & early 2000's after *much* debate in the web profession, we abandoned the then popular frame of Information Architecture (IA) due to the problematic top-down traps in object-focused practice. (Why #placemaking practice also focuses more on social XP.)

This early 2000s humanistic shift in focus on the design side of the Web software profession coincided with similar shifts in engineering from top-down linear project planning to iterative & responsive practices like Extreme Programming and ultimately Agile.

From this IA debate in the web profession, we largely chose to focus on the term & human-centered practices in UX design & Interaction Design (IxD): far more participatory ways than in architecture. Again: paralleling why #Placemaking emerged as a more democratic practice.

The @IxDA was birthed from this conscious debate in the design profession mostly in SF & NYC. Lessons on why this arose and why it shifted need to be renewed and expanded, not ignored in the face of this anarcho-capitalist crypto bubble & its right-wing political affiliations.

Shoutout to IxDA co-founder @daveixd who I saw most at these early IxD meetups in NYC, and to many colleagues who debated this at the IA conferences to the point where it became a joke... a heightened zest of conscious intentional practice we need more of these days.

The @IxDA formed officially in 2003 and now has over 120,000 members and over 200 local groups. (The significantly smaller Information Architecture Institute was formed a year before and was dissolved in 2019.)

Notably, @odannyboy literally wrote the book on this evolution, his book Designing for Interaction remains a core valuable text in the practice. Again, the critique of architecture from #Placemaking parallels many of these debates in HCD-oriented software design.

Not only does @odannyboy's now classic book Designing for Interaction includes valuable history on the evolution of these practices it also described the practices in detail, with wise critique earned from practice (not ivory towers or elite unquestioned truisms.)

Here's my favorite definition of Interaction Design from @odannyboy's book Designing for Interaction, the implications are many if you sit with this.

This is why websites are *not places*! Media Ecology speaking social software is super *complicated*... while cities and actual #publicspace are super *complex*... sites of deep direct experience. Don't let foolish neo-Platonist dualists convince your our bodies don't matter.

I notice many fellow practioiners who survived past digital bubbles since the 90s have this radar for the foolish gullible naivete of bubble mode culture. So too now around crypto/web3, and many do-gooders within, the utopic enthusiasm w/ little critical thought.

Final thought: I remember warning @elipariser in early 2019 before forming @WeAreNew_Public about these trappings & tendencies of uncritical ahistorical architecture reification, and traps in analogies for software. www--arc.com manifests all of these problems.

I want to help root out foolish paths & chart wiser ways forward, clear of toxic anarcho-capitalism. Am working on an essay for @PAyoY10's Buddhist Justice Reporter project speaking to these issues from a deeper ethical POV. #techethics #responsibletech #civictech #digitaldharma

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