I liked Nº2
A new era of optimism, regulating social media, humanitarian designers, coconut currencies, design for deaf blindness and the joy of falling forward.
Optimism is back in my DNA, thanks to teaching myself to see the world from new perspectives. In today’s digital world, this skill is crucial — it shapes our moods, decisions, and relationships. Since the age of 14 I immersed myself in digital consumption and consumption, as a UX designer, programmer and techno head, I’ve reflected and decided: it’s time for hyper-optimism to make way for nuanced, solution-oriented pragmatism!
- Johannes Drosdowski in taz nicely suggests how legislation can help to regulate social media without banning it to be child save. As a designer working in UX responsibility and accessibility are crucial in the creation of services and software. So I was instantly hooked. They recommend putting on protection gear instead of age limits and compared it nicely to forbidding kids to learn to ride a bike or even look at it and the day the turn 16 send them out on an overpowered electric one into our crowded traffic against cars and trucks.
- Humanitarian Designers, an association co-founded by Cédric Fettouche was recommended to me by Cecilia Scolaro, a designer from Amsterdam. I strongly suggest you check it out, if you want to find out how you can get involved in the public sector or humanitarian field with your expertise.
- Genderfluidity, matriarchy and coconuts as currency? This is not science fiction, the indigenous Cuna people living off the coast of Panama 🇵🇦 are doing exactly so. This got me intrigued and i am looking forward to what I can learn from this, both in story telling and social design. Read more on BBC Travel
- “Underwater with closed eyes” — the title of a short film by Joe Bloom famous for @aview.fromabridge made me truly reflect on deafblindness. It got me thinking: how can we simplify our interfaces to deepen experiences? Companies and artworks often overload rather than focus on the essence of the task. See clip on Instagram
- Cars in Baywatch are trans? “She is a stallion, allright” (S01E12) Isn’t it ironic how the beach boys give their car a female gender, yet at the same time call it a stallion?
- “Voranscheitern” beschreibt das Konzept, aus Fehlschlägen zu lernen, weil die Gegenseite eine neue Taktik gefunden hat. Es ist nicht nur für Protestbewegungen nützlich, sondern auch für Visionäre und den Alltag, um Strategien zu entwickeln und langfristig dranzubleiben.
- “Failing forward” captures the idea of learning from setbacks when the opposition adopts new tactics. It’s useful not only for protests but also for visionaries and everyday life, offering strategies to persevere and adapt over time.
This is it for this week. I also redid my link in bio (fuck linktree for selling our data) and turned it into a full fledged blog with https://11ty.dev for you to click through old articles and find publications way back to 2011. More content will find it’s way there. No more cookies, no bullshit. This is going to make me platform independent for the next couple of years. Platforms come and go. Non-short form content is here to stay if you can take care of the data!
So long!
