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Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Sunday, April 8, 2018

Finding anybody on Facebook is difficult now, the company has stopped this feature


Facebook is constantly changing its policy after its data is leaked. Now the company has made a major change to the users. Indeed, it is now difficult to find a friend on Facebook. The first users searched for someone's mobile number were searched. Now the company has stopped this feature.
Users will no longer be able to find anyone with a mobile number. Indeed, because of some profile of the same name, people were searching their friends on Facebook from mobile number. But this feature was misused. Some unknown people searched for people on Facebook using their mobile number and searched for their information. So the company has stopped this feature now.
Apart from this, Facebook has tightened the Third Party App's rules. No third party app can now collect information about Facebook users' wedding, religion, views and offices. Facebook has given this information in its blog post. In another blog post, Facebook said that now users themselves will decide whether they will see or not see anything. The blog said that Facebook will not share user information with any advertiser companies. Facebook's advertising policies have a broad knowledge that we have decided to show users some advertisements. He told the area how we share our services, infrastructure and information.
All apps will have to seek approval from Facebook for receiving information such as post, photo, video, like, check-in, event and group of users. Facebook 's CTO said that we started applying this kind of approval to the apps in 2014, but any app will have to pass through strict provisions to get approval from Facebook to access these statistics.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Voxels (VOX) — Future of Virtual Reality


Imagine if you could capitalize on the explosive growth of cryptocurrencies and the power of virtual reality in one investment. Would that be something you’d be interested in? I sure am. That’s why I am buying up all the Voxels I can get, which is currently trading at $.23. Believe me when I say that Voxel will be the OFFICIAL currency of virtual reality. This cryptocurrency has been created by Voxelus, a leading virtual reality world builder and marketplace, AND it’s compatible with Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. As of today, Voxelus is the world’s largest source of virtual reality content, with more than 500 unique assets, 50 working games, and 7,000 additional pieces of content through their partnerships. I can confidently say that in 2020 Voxels could be trading at $1.50 a coin because the team is lead by legendary entrepreneur Halsey Minor, have strategic partnerships, an upcoming release of their first standalone game, and several other drivers of growth that I will outline below.

Basics:

  1. Voxelus is a platform that allows anyone, anywhere to create and play VR games without needing to write a single line of code
  2. The platform consists of the Voxelus Creator, a 3D design app for PC and Mac; Voxelus Viewer, which works on desktop PCs, Oculus Rift, and Samsung VR devices; Voxelus Marketplace, which allows creators to sell and user to buy VR content and games for the Voxelus ecosystem
  3. The only form of payment within this ecosystem is Voxel, the in-game cryptocurrency
  4. Ticker: VOX
    Price: $.23
    Ranking by Market Cap: 70
    Market Capitalization: $47,036,640
    Circulating Supply: 210,000,000 VOX
    Max Supply: 210,000,000 VOX
    Average Trading Volume: $8,316,144
    Consensus: PoW

Team:

  1. The Voxels team is lead by no other legendary entrepreneur than Halsey Minor. Mr. Minor was the founder of CNET, co-founder of Google Voice, Salesforce.com, OpenDNS, Uphold, and Rhapsody.
  2. The development team is led by Argentinean software industry veteran Martin Repetto. Mr. Repetto previously created, Atmosphir, a video game creation tool that was the runner up on the TechCrunch 50 in 2008. He was also the CEO of Minor Studios.
  3. The business development and marketing teams are based in Los Angeles. The development and operations teams are located in Rosario, close to Buenos Aires, Argentina
  4. As of 2016, the Voxels team has 10 individuals working on this project full time

Drivers of Growth:

  1. Simply put, the team. Mr. Minor is arguably the most impressive and seasoned leader I have ever come across in the cryptocurrency space. He will squeeze every ounce of value out of this project
  2. The Voxels team is on the verge of launching their first standalone game, Xtraction Royale. The game will be compatible with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Steam VR. These are all large VR platforms with a good portion of the total VR market share
  3. Voxels has engaged in a recent partnership with Flatpyramid.com, which will give Voxels users access to 7,000 digital assets like animated characters and environments
  4. The team established the Voxel Foundation to help expand Voxel’s ecosystem to a variety of network games, VR platforms, and various entertainment outlets. The team has dedicated $5 Million Voxel towards this effort, with the option to add an additional $10 million
  5. The team is currently undergoing a rebranding effort that should help boost their market exposure and increase public awareness. They have also alluded to introducing a newly formed partnership once the rebranding has been completed
  6. Voxel has multi-platform wallets for MAC, PC, and Linux
  7. It has been estimated that the market value for VR in 2020 will exceed $40 billion and Voxels will be at the epicenter of that explosive growth. Current market value for VR is about $6 billion

Headwinds:

  1. Both VR and cryptocurrency are very young, evolving types of technology, so there will be lots of growing pains as a result. However, this team is lead by arguably the best leader which will help them navigate through the turbulent times
  2. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future
  3. As of now, Voxels’s growth has happened purely through word of mouth. There has currently been no marketing dollars spent on this project

Summary:

Since this project is so unique we will have to do a little math and make some assumptions to get our price target. The current market value for VR is about $6 billion and the price of Voxels is:
  1. Price: $.23
    Ranking by Market Cap: 70
    Market Capitalization: $47,036,640
    Circulating Supply: 210,000,000 VOX
As I previously mentioned, it is estimated that the market value for VR will reach $40 billion by 2020. So, if you apply the same growth rate to Voxel’s current price, it would be valued at about $1.50 a coin in 2020. However, this is assuming that Voxels market share stays the same into 2020, but I will promise you it will only grow from here.
Voxels Team… Let’s change the world!!


Source:Hacker Noon

Thursday, January 25, 2018

9 Things Only iPhone Power Users Take Advantage of on Their Devices


For many, it’s difficult to imagine life before smartphones.
At the same time, it’s hard to believe that the original Apple iPhone, considered a genuine unicorn at the time thanks to its superior experience and stunning, rainbow-worthy display, released over 10 years ago.
Even though the iPhone is older than most grade school students, some of its capabilities remain a mystery to the masses.
Sure, we all hear about the latest, greatest features, but what about those lingering in the background just waiting to be discovered?
Getting your hands wrapped around those capabilities is what separates you, a soon-to-be power user, from those who haven’t truly unleashed its full potential.
So, what are you waiting for? Release that unicorn and let it run free like the productivity powerhouse it was always meant to be.
Here are 9 ways to get started.

1. Get Back Your Closed Tabs

We’ve all done it. While moving between tabs or screens, our fingers tap the little “x” and close an important browser tab.
With the iPhone, all is not lost. You can get that epic unicorn meme back from oblivion!
The included Safari browser makes recovering a recently closed tab a breeze. Learn more about the process here: Reopen Tabs

2. Smarter Photo Searching

Searching through photos hasn’t always been the most intuitive process…until now.
Before, you had to rely on labels and categories to support search functions. But now, thanks to new machine learning supported features, the photos app is more powerful than ever.
The iPhone has the ability to recognize thousands of objects, regardless of whether you’ve identified them. That means you can search using keywords to find images with specific items or those featuring a particular person.
Just put the keyword in the search box and let the app do the hard part for you.

3. Find Out Who’s Calling

Sometimes, you can’t simply look at your iPhone’s screen to see who’s calling. Maybe you are across the room, are driving down the road, or have the phone safely secured while jogging.
Regardless of the reason, just grabbing it quickly isn’t an option. But that doesn’t mean you want to sprint across the room, pull your car over, or stop your workout just to find out it’s a robo-dial.
Luckily, you can avoid this conundrum by setting up Siri to announce who’s calling. Then you’ll always know if you actually want to stop what you’re doing to answer before you break away from the task at hand.
See how here: Siri Announce Calls

4. Stop Squinting to Read Fine Print

In the business world, fine print is the donkey we all face on a regular basis. You can’t sign up for a service or look over a contract without facing some very small font sizes.
Thanks to the iPhone, you don’t have to strain your eyes (and likely give yourself a headache) to see everything you need to see when faced with fine print on paper. Just open the Magnifier, and your camera is now a magnifying glass.
See how it’s done here: Magnifier

5. Clear Notifications En Masse

Yes, notifications can be great. They let you know what’s happening without having to open every app individually.
But, if you haven’t tended to your iPhone for a while, they can also pile up quick. And who has the time to handle a huge listed of notifications one at a time?
iPhone’s that featured 3D Touch (iPhone 6S or newer) actually have the ability to let you clean all of your notifications at once.
Clear out here screen by following the instructions here: Clear Notifications

6. Close Every Safari Tab Simultaneously

iPhones running iOS 10 can support an “unlimited” number of Safari tabs at once. While this is great if you like keeping a lot of sites open, it can also get out of hand really quickly if you don’t formally close the ones you don’t need.
If you have more tabs open than stars in the sky, you can set yourself free and close them all at once.
To take advantage of this virtual reset, see the instructions here: Close All Safari Tabs

7. Request Desktop Site

While mobile sites are handy for the optimized experience, they can also be very limiting. Not every mobile version has the features you need to get things done, but requesting the desktop version wasn’t always the easiest process.
Now, you can get to the full desktop site with ease. Just press and hold on the refresh button at the top of the browser screen, and you’ll be given the option to request the desktop site.

8. Get a Trackpad for Email Cursor Control

There you are, doing the daily task of writing out emails or other long messages. As you go along, you spot it; it’s a mistake a few sentences back.
Trying to use a touchscreen to get back to the right place isn’t always easy, especially if the error rests near the edge of the screen.
Now, anyone with a 3D Touch enabled device can leave that frustration in the past. The keyboard can now be turned into a trackpad, giving you the cursor control you’ve always dreamed of having, the equivalent of finding a unicorn at the end of a rainbow.
Learn how here: Keyboard Trackpad

9. Force Close an Unresponsive App

If a single app isn’t doing its job, but the rest of your phone is operating fine, you don’t have to restart your phone to get the app back on track.
Instead, you can force close the unresponsive app through the multitasking view associated with recently used apps that are sitting in standby mode.
Check out how it’s done here: Force Close an App

Be a Unicorn in a Sea of Donkeys

Get my very best Unicorn marketing & entrepreneurship growth hacks.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Ten Thousand Followers


The amazing story of all you awesome people

There aren’t any good stock photos of “ten thousand”, so this piece will just have lots of kittens
I started writing a blog in May 2016, partly because I kept writing rants on Facebook that apparently were “too good not to be online somewhere”, and partly because I was bored after my Master’s degree and wanted something to do with my Sunday mornings.
Sleeping in, of course, was never an option.
This is Luna. Luna is my 6am alarm clock. Every. Single. Day
18 months later, and I’ve written about 100,000 words, been published in all sorts of places, and am now getting regular offers to pitch to major publications — more on this in the coming months.
And most importantly of all, I got to 10,000 followers. This time last year, it was 100 and about half of them were related to me.
All in all, it’s been a good year.
Pictured: Getting what you always wanted
So what’s in store for the Health Nerd? You’ll be happy to know that this year I’ve applied for a PhD with the University of Wollongong, which is actually super exciting and not scary like it feels to me sometimes. I’m also going to be — hopefully — releasing some episodes of a podcast that I’ve started with a brilliant co-host. The topic will be science in the media and I’m really excited to introduce all of you to my dulcet tones over the airwaves.
I’m so much less awkward than I am in text.
What does all of this activity mean to the blog? Nothing! I’ll still be aiming for my regular one health story a week on Medium, as well as an extra member’s-only article a month for all you subscribers who love that extra content.
Pictured: “Extra content”
To sum up, I’d just like to say thank you to you all. I’d never have made it here without all you brilliant people following me and making this all worthwhile. It was a fantastic 2017, and 2018 shows every sign of being brilliant as well.
I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)




How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)

Here I’ll present a way to think about social systems, meaningful interactions, and human values that brings these often-hazy concepts into focus. It’s also, in a sense, an essay on human nature. It’s organized in three sections:
  • Reflection and Experimentation. How do people decide which values to bring to a situation?
  • Practice Spaces. Can we look at social systems and see which values they support and which they undermine?
  • Sharing Wisdom. What are the meaningful conversations that we, as a culture, are starved for?
I’ll introduce these concepts and their implications for design. I will show how, applied to social media, they address issues like election manipulation, fake news, internet addiction, teen depression & suicide, and various threats to children. At the end of the post, I’ll discuss the challenges of doing this type of design at Facebook and in other technology teams.

Reflection and Experimentation

As I tried to make clear in my letter, meaningful interactions and time well spent are a matter of values. For each person, certain kinds of acts are meaningful, and certain ways of relating. Unless the software supports those acts and ways of relating, there will be a loss of meaning.
In the section below about practice spaces, I’ll cover how to design software that’s supportive in this way. But first, let’s talk about how people pick their values in the first place.
We often don’t know how we want to act, or relate, in a particular situation. Not immediately, at least.
When we approach an event (a conversation, a meeting, a morning, a task), there’s a process — mostly unconscious — by which we decide how we want to be.
Interrupting this can lead to doing things we regret. As we’ll see, it can lead to internet addiction, to bullying and trolling, and to the problems teens are having online.
So, we need to sort out the values with which we want to approach a situation. This is a process. I believe it’s the same process, whether you’re deciding something small — like how openly you will approach a particular conversation — or something big.
Let’s start with something big: many teenagers are engaged in sorting out their identities: they take ideas about how they ought to act (manly, feminine, polite, etc) and make up their own minds about whether to approach situations with these values in mind.
Worksheets from “On My Own Terms”. Join our community to play these games!
For these teens, settling on the right values takes a mix of experimentation and reflection. They need to try out different ways of being manly, feminine, intelligent, or kind in different situations and see how they work. They also need to reflect on who they want to be and how they want to live.
These two ingredients — experimentation and reflection — are required to sort out our values. Even the small decisions (for example, deciding how to balance honesty and tact in a conversation) require experimenting in real situations, and reflecting on what matters most.
This process can be intuitive, nonverbal, and unconscious, but it is vital.¹ If we don’t find the right values, it’s hard to feel good about what we do. The following circumstances interfere with experimentation and reflection:
  • High stakes. When deviation from norms becomes disastrous in some way — for instance, with very high reputational stakes — people are afraid to experiment. People need space to make mistakes and systems and social scenes with high consequences interfere with this.
  • Low agency. To put values to the test, a person needs discretion over the manner of their work: they need to experiment with moral values, aesthetic values, and other guiding ideas. Some environments — many of them corporate — make no room for being guided by one’s own moral or aesthetic ideas.
  • Disconnection. One way we judge the values we’re experimenting with is via exposure to their consequences. We all need to know how others feel when we treat them one way or another, to help us decide how we want to treat them. Similarly, an architect needs to know what it’s like to live in the buildings she designs. When the consequences of our actions are hidden, we can’t sort out what’s important.²
  • Distraction and overwork. We also lose the capacity to sort out our values when reflection becomes impossible. This is the major cost of noisy environments, infinite entertainment, push notifications, and some types of poverty.
  • Lack of faith in reflection. Finally, people can come to consider reflection to be useless — or to be avoided — even though it is so natural. The emotions which trigger reflection, including doubt and confusion, can be brushed away as distractions. One way this happens, is if people view their choices through a behaviorist lens: as determined by habits, reinforcement learning, or permanent drives.³ This makes it seem like people don’t have values at all, only habits, tastes, and goals. Experimentation and reflection seem useless.
Software-based social spaces can be disastrous for experimentation and reflection.
One reason that private group messaging (like WhatsApp and Messenger) is replacing virality-based forums (like Twitter, News Feed, and increasingly, Stories) is that the latter are horrible for experimenting with who we are. The stakes are too high. They seem especially bad for women, for teens, and for celebrities—which may partly explain the rise in teen suicide—but they're bad for all of us.
A related problem is online bullying, trolling, and political outrage. Many bullies and trolls would embrace other values if they had a chance to reflect and were better exposed to consequences. In-person spaces are much better for this.
Reflection can be encouraged or discouraged by design — this much is clear from the variety of internet-use helpers, like Moment and Intent. All of us (not just bullies and trolls) would use the Internet differently if we had more room for reflection.
Two lockscreens: one design encourages reflection, and one doesn’t. [from “Empowering Design”]

Exercise: On My Own Terms

In order to learn to support users in experimentation and reflection, designers must experiment and reflect on their own values. On My Own Terms is an exercise for this. Players fill out a worksheet, then socialize in an experimental way.
“On My Own Terms”. Join our community to play these games!
In the experimentation part, players defy norms they’ve previously obeyed, and see how it works out. Often they find that people like them better when they are less conventional — even when they are rude!

Here’s one thing this game makes clear: we discover what’s important to us in the context of real choices and their consequences. People often think they have certain values (eating kale, recycling, supporting the troops) but when they experiment and reflect on real choices, these values are discarded. They thought they believed in them, but only out of context.
This is how it was for me with consistency, rationality, masculinity, and being understated. When I played On My Own Terms, I decided to value these less. My true values are only clear through experimentation and reflection.
For users to have meaningful interactions and feel their time was well spent, they need to approach situations in a way they believe in. They need space to experiment and reflect.
But this is not enough.

Practice Spaces

Every social system makes some values easier to practice, and other values harder. Even with our values in order, a social environment can undermine our plans.
Most social platforms are designed in a way that encourages us to act against our values: less humbly, less honestly, less thoughtfully, and so on. Using these platforms while sticking to our values would mean constantly fighting their design. Unless we’re prepared for a fight, we’ll likely regret our choices.
There’s a way to address this, but it requires a radical change in how we design: we must reimagine social systems as practice spaces for the users’ values — as virtual places custom built to make it easier for the user to relate and to act in accord with their values.
Designers must get curious about two things:
  1. When users want to relate according to a particular value, what is hard about doing that?
  2. What is it about some social spaces that can make relating in this way easier?
For example, if an Instagram user valued being creative, being honest, or connecting adventurously, then designers would need to ask: what kinds of social environments make it easier to be creative, to be honest, or to connect adventurously? They could make a list of places where people find these things easier: camping trips, open-mics, writing groups, and so on.
Next, the designers would ask: which features of these environments make them good at this? For instance, when someone is trying to be creative, do mechanisms for showing relative status (like follower counts) help or hurt? How about when someone wants to connect adventurously? Or, with being creative, is this easier in a small group of close connections, or a large group of distant ones? And so on.
To take another example, if a News Feed user believes in being open-minded, designers would ask which social environments make this easier. Having made such a list, they would look for common features. Perhaps it’s easier to be open-minded when you remember something you respect about a person’s previous views. Or, perhaps it’s easier when you can tell if the person is in a thoughtful mood by reading their body language. Is open-mindedness more natural when those speaking have to explicitly yield time for others to respond? Designers would have to find out.

Exercise: Space Jam

To start thinking this way, it’s best if designers focus first on values which they themselves have trouble practicing. In this game, Space Jam, each player shares something they’d like to practice, some way of interacting. Then everyone brainstorms, imagining practice spaces (both online and offline) which could make this easier.
“Space Jam”. Join our community to play these games!
Here’s an example of the game, played over Skype with three designers from Facebook:
Eva says she wants to practice “changing the subject when a conversation seems like a dead end.”
Someone comments that Facebook threads are especially bad at this. We set a timer for three minutes and brainstorm on our own. Then everyone presents one real-world way to practice, and one mediated way.
George’s idea involves a timer. When it rings, everyone says “this conversation doesn’t meet my need for ____”. Jennifer suggests something else: putting a bowl in the middle of a conversation. Player can write out alternate topics and put them in the bowl in a conspicuous but non-interrupting way. (Jennifer also applies this idea to Facebook comments, where the bowl is replaced by a sidebar.)
We all wonder together: could it ever be “okay” for people to say things like “this conversation doesn’t meet my need for ____”? Under what circumstances is this safe to say?
This leads to new ideas.

In the story above, Eva is an honest person. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy to be honest. She struggles to be honest when she wants to change the conversation. By changing the social rules, we can make it easier for her to live according to her values.
Games like Space Jam show how much influence the rules of social spaces have over us, and how easy it is for thoughtful design to change those rules. Designers become more aware of the values around them and why they can be difficult to practice. They feel more responsible for the spaces they are creating. (Not just the spaces they make for users, but also in daily interactions with their colleagues). This gives them a fresh approach to design.
If designers learn this skill, they can support the broad diversity of users’ values. Then users will no longer have to fight the software to practice their values.

Sharing Wisdom

I hope the previous ideas—reflection, experimentation, and practice spaces—have given a sense for how to support meaningful actions. Let’s turn to the question of meaningful information and meaningful conversation.
We are having a problem in this area, too.
Amidst nonstop communication — a torrent of articles, videos, and posts — there is still a kind of conversation that people are starved for, because our platforms aren’t built for it.
When this type of conversation — which I’ll call sharing wisdom — is missing, people feel that no one understands or cares about what’s important to them. People feel their values are unheeded, unrecognized, and impossible to rally around.
As we’ll see, this situation is easy to exploit, and the media and fake news ecosystems have taken advantage. By looking at how this exploitation works, we can see how conversations become ideological and polarized, and how elections are manipulated.
But first, what do I mean by sharing wisdom?
Social conversation is often understood as telling stories, sharing feelings, or getting advice. But each of these can be seen as a way to discover values.
When we ask our friends for advice — if you look carefully — we aren’t often asking about what we should do. Instead, we’re asking them about what’s important in our situation. We’re asking for values which might be new to us. Humans constantly ask each other “what’s important?” — in a spouse, in a wine, in a programming language.
I’ll call this kind of conversation (both the questions and the answers) wisdom.
Wisdom, n. Information about another person’s hard-earned, personal values — what, through experimentation and reflection, they’ve come to believe is important for living.
Wisdom is what’s exchanged when best friends discuss their relationships or jobs, when we listen to stories told by grandmothers, church pastors, startup advisors, and so on.
It comes in many forms: mentorship, texts, rituals, games. We seek it naturally, and in normal conditions it is abundant.
For various reasons, the platforms are better for sharing other things (links, recommendations, family news) than for asking each other what’s important. So, on internet platforms, wisdom gets drowned out by other forms of discourse:
  • By ideology. Our personal values are easily eclipsed by ideological values (for instance, by values designed to promote business, a certain elite, or one side in a political fight). This is happening when posts about partisan politics make us lose track of our shared (or sharable) concerns, or when articles about productivity outpace our deeper life questions.
  • By scientism. Sometimes “hard data” or pseudo-scientific “models” are used to justify things that would be more appropriately understood as values. For instance, when neuroscience research is used to justify a style of leadership, our discourse about values suffers.
  • By bullshit. Many other kinds of social information can drown out wisdom. This includes various kinds of self-promotion; it includes celebrities giving advice for which they have no special experience; it includes news. Information that looks like wisdom can make it harder to locate actual, hard-earned wisdom.
For all these reasons, talk about personal values tends to evaporate from the social platforms, which is why people feel isolated. They don’t sense that their personal values are being understood.
In this state, it’s easy for sites like Breitbart, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, or even Russia Today to capitalize on our feeling of disconnection. These networks leverage the difficulty of sharing wisdom, and the ease of sharing links. They make a person feel like they are sharing a personal value (like living in a rural town or supporting women), when actually they are sharing headlines that twist that value into a political and ideological tool.

Exercise: Value Sharing Circle

For designers to get clear about what wisdom sounds like, it can be helpful to have a value sharing circle. Each person shares one value which they have lived up to on the day they are playing, and one which they haven’t. Here’s a transcript from one of these circles:
There are twelve of us, seated for dinner. We eat in silence for what feels like a long time. Then, someone begins to speak. It’s Otto. He says he works at a cemetery. At 6am this morning, they called him. They needed him to carry a coffin during a funeral service. No one else could do it. So, he went. Otto says he lived up to his values of showing up and being reliable. But — he says — he was distracted during the service. He’s not sure he did a good job. He worries about the people who were mourning, whether they noticed his missteps, whether his lack of presence made the ritual less perfect for them. So, he didn’t live up his values of supporting the sense of ritual and honoring the dead.
In the course of such an evening, participants are exposed to values they’ve never thought about. That night, other people spoke of their attempts to be ready for adventure, be a vulnerable leader, and make parenthood an adventure.

Playing this makes the difference between true personal values and ideologies very clear. Notice how different these values are from the values of business. No one in the circle was particularly concerned with productivity, efficiency, or socio-economic status. No one was even concerned with happiness!
Social platforms could make it much easier to share our personal values (like small town living) directly, and to acknowledge one another and rally around them, without turning them into ideologies or articles.
This would do more to heal politics and media than any “fake news” initiative. To do it, designers will need to know what this kind of conversation sounds like, how to encourage it, and how to avoid drowning it out.

The Hardest Challenge

I’ve pointed out many challenges, but left out the big one. 😕
Only people with a particular mindset can do this type of design. It takes a new kind of empathy.
Empathy can mean understanding someone’s goals, or understanding someone’s feelings. And these are important.
But to build on these concepts — experimentation, reflection, wisdom, and practice spaces— a designer needs to see the experimental part of a person, the reflective part, the person’s desire for (and capacity for) wisdom, and what the person is practicing.
As with other types of empathy, learning this means growing as a person.
Why? Well, just as it’s hard to see others’ feelings when we repress our own, or hard to listen to another person’s grand ambitions unless we are comfortable with ours... it’s hard to get familiar with another person’s values unless we are first cozy with our own, and with all the conflicts we have about them.
This is why the exercises I’ve listed (and others, which I didn’t have space to include) are so important. Spreading this new kind of empathy is a huge cultural challenge.
But it’s the only way forward for tech.

Thanks for reading. (Here are the credits and footnotes.)
Please clap for this and the previous post!
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