And so, we find ourselves at this crossroads. Regardless of which path we choose, the future of computing will be hyper-personalized. The question is whether that personalization will be in service of keeping us passively glued to screens—wading around in the shallows, stripped of agency—or whether it will enable us to direct more attention to what matters.

In order to build the resonant technological future we want for ourselves, we will have to resist the seductive logic of hyper-scale, and challenge the business and cultural assumptions that hold it in place. We will have to make deliberate decisions that stand in the face of accepted best practices—rethinking the system architectures, design patterns, and business models that have undergirded the tech industry for decades.

We suggest these five principles as a starting place:

  1. Private: In the era of AI, whoever controls the context holds the power. While data often involves multiple stakeholders, people must serve as primary stewards of their own context, determining how it’s used.
  2. Dedicated: Software should work exclusively for you, ensuring contextual integrity where data use aligns with your expectations. You must be able to trust there are no hidden agendas or conflicting interests.
  3. Plural: No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit. Healthy ecosystems require distributed power, interoperability, and meaningful choice for participants.
  4. Adaptable: Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it.
  5. Prosocial: Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off.

Source: The Resonant Computing Manifesto

There are few people I trust to have the systems level thinking to build up platforms - Alex Komoroske is one of them. I’ve linked to this before. I also suspect I will link to this many more times. The message here is important.

Our human brains have the insane capability to ignore hard things that don’t matter immediately. Despite its intrinsically democratic, federated, distributed nature, it’s the very spiral that brought us to where we are to the current state of the web.

I worry about the stewards of the next platform shift. All of them, despite their best intentions, have intense commercial motivations that often lead to lock-in, a bias for action at the expense of thoughtfulness. I am not trying to form a moral high ground here, as much as accept that, in their shoes, I might make decisions that seem rational to me, which might be similar.

As a result, it’s incumbent upon people who are not part of those organizations to be able to instill and hold other points of view that will allow for a different point to view to at least survive, if not thrive.

So, I am a signatory. I signed the day it was released. I am trying to be an evangelist and share with the minimal influence that I have in this world.

You should sign it after reading, if you also believe in it.