July 22, 2020. A note to the team on slowing down.

What's inspiring me lately is the engine of counterculture that's humming to life, from rebel mayors, to social media boycotts, to peaceful protesting, and even the unexpected reframe many have gained from working from home. I notice people questioning their assumptions and routines, and seeing everyday life in new ways.

Has anyone else read Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing"? It's a collection of essays about how reclaiming your own attention can deepen your political engagement, ground you in your natural environment, and honestly, make your life more meaningful. She's against productivity for its own sake, and in favor of knowing the land you live on and the people you live near. She's a critic of tech, but an informed one, and not reflexively opposed to all progress. This book reads like a lightning bolt.

I learned from Odell about a fourth-century philosopher named Diogenes (depicted below), who practiced his convictions as something like performance art, intending to shock people out of their habitual stupor. For example, he'd walk backward down a street and enter a theater only when everyone else was leaving. When an invading army approached, and Athens was a whirlwind of preparation, Diogenes began to roll his tub (he lived in a tub) up and down the avenue, in order to "make myself look as busy as the rest of you." And when Alexander the Great met him and asked what favor he could do him, Diogenes (depicted below) asked him to stop blocking his sunlight. A hero of refusal!

Anyway, "How to Do Nothing" is not a book about AR. But it inspired me to think about AR in a new way. We approach AR with a sense of endless possibility and the thrill of human progress. But with Odell's ideas in mind, I wondered: When we realize our dream of overlaying computing on everything, of filtering the way we meet the world, what might we lose? When we classify and define everything around us, from the sky to the ground to animals and plants, what nuance, and what experience, might we erode? And we're not just codifying things, we're also ranking them. When we use AR to scan a road, on which there are cars and cyclists and graffiti and pigeons and smells and sounds, what should the camera prioritize? How should it assign value? Who decides what matters most, and what bias informs that decision? Might these incremental choices create a reality that is not enhanced... but flattened, limited, myopic? 

Wrestling with these questions invigorated me, as a big believer in AR. This book pulled me out of my go-go-go attitude toward innovation, my own blindered workflow, and reoriented me in a wider context. 

This moment in time is shaking a lot of things up. It's challenging our assumptions and the very ways we live. But you know what? That jolt, that disorientation, is what sparks creativity. Finding a fresh way to look at something that's been right in front of us, is what our team does best. Here's to walking backwards, stepping off the conveyor belt, and seeking ever new points of view.