Thread · 4 tweets · 23 Sept 2021

The idea that tech should organise information for you instead of empowering you to organise your own information - as if a one-size-fits-all organisation were possible or desirable - is as pervasive in big tech as it is dumb, and eventually toxic.

There's a word we use for organising information: it's called thinking. Tech isn't supposed to do that for you, it's supposed to help you do it yourself better. But that requires a wholly different design than the systems we have today.

At heart is the superstition that you can somehow optimise other people's thinking. You can't. That would only be possible if there were only one "rational" approach to the world, which is about as far from science as you can get.

It's cute when it's undergrads who can't find where they saved a project. But we'd be extremely lucky if that were the only impact.