Curran Dwyer

memento mori

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

I’m surprised there aren’t at least dozens of serious attempts to rethink computing from data structure to interface. The problem I think for Apple is they have to build an OS for basically everyone. New computers can focus on crushing it for a narrower group of people.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

@sporadica I generally start with the assumption that it’s not interesting. If the other person wants to know more, they’ll ask

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

@signulll The absolute state of ChromeOS! The missed opportunity to experiment from a place of owning the platform and distribution channels!

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

I wonder if brainrot will lose its appeal as the basic activity of computing shifts from clicking around to learning and organizing. Because the whole situation gets less chaotic?

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Your laptop is a visual medium for learning, collaborating, and planning. These activities (not submitting forms) are what human computing is about.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Intelligence has a central place in computing now. It will be at the core of the computer, too.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Agentic computing raises questions about the visual medium of computing. With people orchestrating teams of agents in iMessage, what is the laptop for now?

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

These AI and spirituality adjacent reading groups that are popping up around SF give me hope for this next wave of HCI. Also like could there be a more interesting topic? I don’t think so

[Pratyush @pratyushbuddiga]

Starting a small dinner reading group (12 max) that meets biweekly to discuss Magnifica Humanitas and then other AI topics.

We live in interesting times.

Let me know if you'd be interested in joining, ideally want a good mix of religious/non-religious people.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Paper screens are the future

[Welf @_welf]

i wish for all of you to experience how literally anything you do on a computer …

feels so wildly different when you’re doing it on paper?!

it’s almost like God/nature didn’t want us looking at flickering rectangles of artificial blue light 8-16 hours a day

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

From brainrot, slop, tiny glowing misery rectangles to something like beautiful, perfect organic produce.

The bounty of the aftermath of the Second World War included amazing advancements in food technology. Now potato chips can be kept fresh for years! Now a square meal can be manufactured, frozen, and microwaved in minutes, to be enjoyed by the warm glow of your TV. These innovative new foods can also be nutritionally enriched, can swap fat for emulsifying fat-free chemicals, or be genetically modified at the ingredient level to achieve new heights of efficiency and maybe flavor.

As marvelous as a microwave TV dinner sometimes is, we collectively eventually caught on that there’s an issue. I personally experienced a version of this collective awakening when, experimenting with Hamburger Helper, I took sourdough bread with olive oil and lemon as a side. I was shocked, after a bite of Hamburger Helper, at how much more flavorful simple bread and olive oil is. And why? Because it’s real, honest food, not a product manufactured and engineered for efficiency.

John Mackey, among others, converted the collective realization that putting real things into our bodies is important into a major supermarket chain and multibillion dollar business. Whole Foods, as we know, is now a subsidiary of Amazon following a $13.7 billion acquisition.

If you are what you eat, there is an increasing realization that you are also what you attend to. The way we direct our attention is to our mind what the things we choose to eat are to our bodies. For many years, tech companies and users have emphasized engagement and dopamine loops in technology. Opening my computer, I feel the souls of ten thousand PMs needing my attention for them to hit their KPIs. It’s not a great feeling. And it’s unhealthy.

With the paradigm change happening in computing, there’s an opportunity to make a new kind of computer that transcends all this, or at least a lot of it, providing a dopaminergically and emotionally healthy computing environment that supports, in its own way, a depth of attention and quality of content that yesterday’s computers never aspired to. Whole Foods, and Superhuman, show that there’s a high-end demographic willing at least to pay for it. Optimistically, hopefully, a cognitively and emotionally healthy computing environment has the potential to move the needle on civic, intellectual, and cultural engagement while enriching the lives of its users.

Worth a try. Let’s build!

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

@signulll Cities tend to build on top of and adapt what came before, becoming more beautiful in the process. I tend to think something similar is likely to happen with computers. Fully agree about the address bar, but we’ll all just have to build towards the future and figure it out

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

@signulll Cities tend to build on top of and adapt what came before, becoming more beautiful in the process. I tend to think something similar is likely to happen with computers. Fully agree about the address bar, but we’ll all just have to build towards the future and figure it out

[J @psswordprotectd]

it seems obvious to me phones have largely gotten in the way of looping attention which is why a lot of things are a lot worse in certain aspects. attention fragmented, scrolling interrupts devotion.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

There are so many others like me. I can't wait to see what we all create.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Coding assistants shifted my position from that of a beggar negiotiating with others to implement my ideas to that of a builder implementing them. A process of realizing myself as much as the artifacts. This decisive spiritual about-face can only be a good sign.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

@msimoni The desktop metaphor turns out to be a great solution. What happens underneath the desktop to surface information is the question.

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

One of, maybe the best new essay I’ve read this year. What might we aspire to? How might we live? How might our aspirations and the movements of the soul be aligned and harmonious?

[Will Manidis @WillManidis]

https://t.co/aHOHtb1rcW

[Teddy @WarnerTeddy]

i mounted a tiny microphone on my apartment balcony to listen for any birds passing by and built a site to collage them as they're heard

[Chris Olah @ch402]

https://t.co/udIVxLdid5

[Curran Dwyer @CurranDwyer]

Don’t recall what annoyed me at school to prompt this little reflection but the point stands - learning, developing oneself, is a process rooted in curiosity and joy. We need environments that cultivate this, in and outside of school.