Technology should bring out the best in humanity, not the worst—a manifesto for resonant computing built on five principles that reject hyper-scale extraction for human flourishing.
The goals they state seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t really see any contradiction with hyper-personalized computing and having thriving communities. I think it would be great if you could easily tailor your computer towards your workflow. It doesn’t mean that I’m not able to have shared interests with other people who have different flows.
In fact, I think the way modern applications are build is fundamentally wrong precisely because they couple the logic of the app with the UI. This is the reason we can’t compose apps the way we do command line utils. If apps were broken up into a service and frontend component by default, you’d be able to chain these services together to build highly customized workflows on top of that.
And that’s precisely the kind of thing AI tools are actually decent at doing. You can throw a bunch of API endpoints at it and have it build a UI using them that does what you want, or if it’s good enough you might not even need a UI, you can literally just type what you want and it’ll figure it out.
I’ll be honest with you, I understand very little of what you are saying as I truly am not a techie, but my issue is with the manifesto itself, because it seems fully based on idealism and very big words with very little around them. Like resonance as a quality, what does this mean exactly and if its something that can’t be measured how is an AI system of any kind supposed to be resonant and how do they know this (whatever it is) can be achieved by taking these steps?
It reads:
resonance. It’s the experience of encountering something that speaks to our deeper values. It’s a spark of recognition, a sense that we’re being invited to lean in, to participate. Unlike the digital junk food of the day, the more we engage with what resonates, the more we’re left feeling nourished, grateful, alive. As individuals, following the breadcrumbs of resonance helps us build meaningful lives. As communities, companies, and societies, cultivating shared resonance helps us break away from perverse incentives, and play positive-sum infinite games together.
This is a lot of words that remind of the manifestos or such that the big tech bros like Musk promoted at the start of AI to get people to buy into the democratizing value of AI or whatever. Many fell for it, but we know now how absolutely not true this was. This smells like the sort of tech manifesto to me that is so up in the air that it’s just farming for a type of disappointment.
Ultimately, these things aren’t concrete plans, it’s just a conversation starter. The people who published it aren’t building anything, but it does provide a starting point for things to think of those of us who do build things. The parts I thought were meaningful were in the list at the end:
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.
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.
Plural: No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit. Healthy ecosystems require distributed power, interoperability, and meaningful choice for participants.
Adaptable: Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it.
Prosocial: Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off.
The goals they state seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t really see any contradiction with hyper-personalized computing and having thriving communities. I think it would be great if you could easily tailor your computer towards your workflow. It doesn’t mean that I’m not able to have shared interests with other people who have different flows.
In fact, I think the way modern applications are build is fundamentally wrong precisely because they couple the logic of the app with the UI. This is the reason we can’t compose apps the way we do command line utils. If apps were broken up into a service and frontend component by default, you’d be able to chain these services together to build highly customized workflows on top of that.
And that’s precisely the kind of thing AI tools are actually decent at doing. You can throw a bunch of API endpoints at it and have it build a UI using them that does what you want, or if it’s good enough you might not even need a UI, you can literally just type what you want and it’ll figure it out.
I’ll be honest with you, I understand very little of what you are saying as I truly am not a techie, but my issue is with the manifesto itself, because it seems fully based on idealism and very big words with very little around them. Like resonance as a quality, what does this mean exactly and if its something that can’t be measured how is an AI system of any kind supposed to be resonant and how do they know this (whatever it is) can be achieved by taking these steps?
It reads:
This is a lot of words that remind of the manifestos or such that the big tech bros like Musk promoted at the start of AI to get people to buy into the democratizing value of AI or whatever. Many fell for it, but we know now how absolutely not true this was. This smells like the sort of tech manifesto to me that is so up in the air that it’s just farming for a
type of disappointment.
Ultimately, these things aren’t concrete plans, it’s just a conversation starter. The people who published it aren’t building anything, but it does provide a starting point for things to think of those of us who do build things. The parts I thought were meaningful were in the list at the end:
I think these are all good things to strive for.
I agree, but struggle to get behind these sorts of manifestos that provide nothing concrete on how this will be achieved.
But it’s nice to see that in tech there might still be alternative ways to think about things, this just doesn’t yet seem all that convincing.