“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” — E.O. Wilson
Hard Refresh is a newsletter about the growing evidence that society may finally have reached peak digital and online saturation — and what comes after.
Life on the internet sucks now. You know it. I know it. Really, everyone knows it. Over the past 15 or so extremely online years, the magic, the unpredictability, the fun, and most of all the sense of extraordinary possibility the internet once held has soured and curdled. Almost everything that once was promising about being online has been replaced by the grim resignation that an ad-littered, homogeneous corporate purgatory of persistent surveillance, algorithmically boosted outrage and disinformation, hyperpartisan trolling, AI-generated slop, and a mudslide of SEO-optimized “content” is what awaits us behind every dopamine-targeted ping and notification.
But slowly, we are waking up — to the harms to which we and our children are subjected all day, every day, and to the realization that there must be a better way.
My objective with this newsletter is to call attention to and celebrate the ways people and communities everywhere are beginning to recognize, push back against, and even exit this downward spiral in ways that are human-centered instead of technology-centered, and which are meant to be more real and authentic, steering us away from the metrics of mere “engagement” and toward more meaningful outcomes that prioritize not shareholder profits but what people (not mere “users”) truly want and value.
“Slowly, we are waking up — to the harms to which we and our children are subjected all day, every day, and to the realization that there must be a better way.”
I call this turn a “hard refresh” — a clearing of the grim metaphorical cache that’s accreted over roughly the last 15 years, making way for an entirely new perspective on what it means to be connected.
Indeed, much of what characterizes this shift can be seen in a slow but steady turn away from screens and the online altogether. But we also find it in thoughtful, creative workarounds of existing web-based tools and platforms that create different, better outcomes for us. It often rejects the frictionless ease of seamless digital user experiences for ones that are intentionally bumpier and less gratuitously accommodating. We see it in countless experiments and prototypes — from novel business models for the delivery of news and journalism, to attempts to break the addictive-by-design grip our mobile devices have on us, to sorties against the stranglehold social media has on our children (to say nothing of the rest of us). Perhaps most of all, it exists in the concerted revival we’re seeing around one of the oldest ways that humans have interacted since the beginning of time: spending time together in person.
I’m a designer, an ethnographic researcher, an academician and a former journalist who’s taken a keen interest in technology and the web since its dawn in the early ‘90s. As a strategic designer, I’ve worked with organizations of every size to create more innovative products and services, both digital and not. As an ethnographer, I’ve spent decades immersing myself in the lived experiences of real human beings out in the world, documenting their needs, goals, pain points, and frustrations. I’ve helped enterprises from Microsoft and Nike to Kroger and Accenture Global to learn and apply the methods and mindsets of human-centered design, and I’ve taught internet culture, communication theory, and international media studies at universities in Australia, Singapore, and even Vietnam.
My aim here is to document the turn away from screens as and where it’s happening — to follow the trail that’s being blazed by the early adopters of this alternative paradigm as we pioneer a new way forward. As with any such new effort, it’s an experiment. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like, or what shape it will take, but I hope to find out together.
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