The more I see, read, and hear about the vagaries of social media; the constant failings and foibles of Facebook, the trolling dumpster fire that is Twitter, the ills of Instagram; the spread of dark patterns; and the unchecked rise of surveillance capitalism, and weapons of math destruction the more I think that the underlying ideas focusing on people and humanity within the IndieWeb movement are its core strength.
Perhaps we need to create a new renaissance of humanism for the 21st century? Maybe we call it digital humanism to create some intense focus, but the emphasis should be completely on the people side.
Naturally there’s a lot more that they–and we all–need to do to improve our lives. Let’s band together to create better people-centric, ethical solutions.
I almost feel like the dark commercial ideas are so heavily dominating the digital space right now that they’re sucking all the oxygen out of the room. The current digital climate feels a lot like the era in which all my friends who went into environmental engineering in the 80’s and 90’s in an effort to educate themselves so that they could improve the world. They all graduated only to find themselves sucked into the only extant (paying) jobs working for big oil and they ended up ultimately only further despoiling the earth instead of protecting it. Another apt analogy are all the doctors who got into the profession to “help people” only to find themselves spending all their time filling out insurance related paperwork. How can we fix the inequities in these areas created by the siren song of the mega-corporations?