Most online experiences are made, like fast food, to be cheap, easy, and addictive: appealing to our hunger for connection but rarely serving up nourishment. Shrink-wrapped junk food experiences are handed to us for free by social media companies, and we swallow them up eagerly, like kids given buckets of candy with ads on all the wrappers.

These experiences are sensitive neither to individual humans nor to the human collective, but only to page views and growth (in a corporate, not personal sense).

It is fitting that these companies call their customers “users”.

As we fill in the same boxes, answer the same questions, and express ourselves in the same generic ways, we might think this convergence of identity is a good thing, leading to some kind of global unity or mass empathy. But true empathy comes not from forcing people all to be the same, but from helping people to appreciate their differences.

From a longer article by Jonathan Harris on "building digital worlds".

I don't agree with everything Harris writes in the piece - for example, I am less pessimistic about our communication becoming shorter and faster - but his diagnosis of digital homogenization and thus the need for more consciously (and humanly) designed online experiences and worlds resonates with me.

We live in a world where burnout is rampant. No wonder why, when we now have the ability to be connected, 24/7. We have to ask ourselves what we want to be connected to. There have always been workaholics but today we see many of those behaviors shunned by a new generation of people seeking greater balance in their lives. We now have the ability to blend what we do for a living, what we're passionate about and every other facet of our lives into a much healthier/happier life, a designed life. I honestly can't remember the last time I had a bright new idea while sitting at a desk.

Great article. I'm posting this while actually sitting outside in a café, studying and working.

I wrote about the effectiveness of changing places a while back. This is something similar: For every task, there is a perfect environment. Sometimes, it's a secluded place in the mountains, sometimes it's a busy office, and sometimes, it's a café with music and chatter.

The better you get in figuring out which environment fits which task, the more productive you get.