Augmenting Communities: A Revolutionary Idea
It all stems from a fundamental belief that humans are naturally good. That, in the right circumstances, they will support one another and enchant each other’s lives. That they will form self-governing communities that grow, learn and adapt to their members’ needs, help them fulfill their aspirations and conquer the challenges they face.
These right circumstances are found in environments that foster trust, decrease friction and misunderstanding, and that provide the tools to root out the patterns of corruption: the centralization of power, the manipulation of information, the vilification of the other…
In our newly connected world, technology can help us create these environments. Even if it is hard to look at digital trends and be hopeful for humanity, we should.
We’ve gotten used to the basic conveniences that digital technology brought into our lives and now we want more. More than automated and opaque efficiency processes that turn us into cogs; more than instant gratification from manufactured desires; more than ego boost from shallow relationships; more than divisive worldviews shaped by commercial interests; more than social identities based on passive consumption and likes.
We’re doing technology wrong. We’re trying to solve our core problems as a society by accreting features on a brittle and faulty scaffolding, built with the wrong priorities in mind, if any.
Digital technology is the realm of the arbitrary. Apart from optimizing how information moves from one part of a computer to another, every digital experience is the result of conscious design choices: which pixels appear on a screen, what they mean and how we interact with them.
We can question every one of these choices and weigh them against how much they improve our lives. We can imagine digital systems built from the ground up with this sole purpose in mind.
This was the dream of the pioneers of the digital age. Augmented Communities aims to continue this work and cultivate the hope in humankind’s capacity to transform itself for the better through humane technology.