On Putting Yourself Out There
I chose to move to a more urban part of the city after the COVID lockdowns. My old area had coffee shops and food, a weekend buzz of people, but it wasn’t close to downtown to feel the tourist crowds, though they did show up sometimes.
I respond better when I see people out and about. I don’t fear missing out, because I’ll do something alone if I want to. Moving blocks from downtown has been more lively.
There are people who seem mentally distressed that sit for hours at the nearby bus stop. One just uses his phone. Another acts out animated conversations with someone invisible, getting more agitated as it continues.
Computers unraveled our world, aided by people. This stuff happened before the internet too, but there were different safeguards when you had to solve problems locally, and it was harder for troublemakers to unleash outrage on strangers. Worse, they don’t understand the chaos they cause because they’re busy chasing internet points.
When I talk of consequence design, I mean how “human-computer interaction” created incentives to disengage from neighbors. There were never incentives to talk to strangers, but we used to do it. Metrics-driven data mining has us seeking connections while ignoring answers in front of us.
A TV ad shows a mom giving her son’s resume to anyone, to help him find work. How quaint it once was to fill out an application and get hired on the spot by a manager who knew their hiring pool. Lamenting empty offices overlooks that landlords don’t connect with local small business owners getting by on small margins who can’t afford leases. These problems seem chicken and egg. Why take a lease you can’t pay? Why don’t cities give space to grow? Corporate welfare lures companies with no local ties who leave when tax breaks expire.
It’s wild that people want to starve local schools of money, with officials whose kids don’t attend public school. This isn’t consequence design, but part of a narrative I can’t escape.
I don’t see improvement. My practice now involves strategic foresight and design futures because you have to envision the future you want. For decades, companies and governments invested in future-casting that led to today’s developments, almost always certain types of men, as if no one else was qualified.
My frustration with civic life is that many solvable problems await action while we remake time horizons. Winning is fun, and you might luck into it when circumstances align. But sustained winning is hard work. Decision-making isn’t about winning; we must constantly reevaluate our definitions of “good” and “wins.”
As a kid, I wondered why school districts experiment in the name of progress. How can latchkey kids think the best thing is to deprive kids of field trips, sports and infrastructure built for them before?
It’s as if we’ve decided everyone could have a good life by just applying somewhere, rather than fix the structural harm done in the name of progress.