Musings captured, sorted, in collaboration with AI.
One of my favorite blogs is that of Matt Webb, the great mind behind Poem/1, the watch that tells time through poems. This isn't about the poem but about one of his latest pieces.
He wrote a piece on how we've seemingly moved from designing the cool stuff we saw in Star Trek to the absurd things in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Part of me welcomes this, as it might mean we also venture a bit away from the darkness of Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" times.
He included these beautiful lines:
Which I wholeheartedly agree with, but see, there's a reason I posted this as a screenshot. You see these two cursors. Well, knowing Matt, I know he has a deep love for exploring the more multiplayer-connected nature of the internet.
So, there are these weird encounters on the website with random strangers, it's like Figma cursors on his website, or for the Web3 people, like in the Party Protocol world.
It always creates these weird, small moments of "Oh, damn, I am not alone here. Who is this one? How crazy is it that there are two others right here?" But also, since I had two tabs open, I actually was that Swiss one. So, does this mean there is an Italian friend who sees two Swiss cursors hovering around the same quote? What goes through their mind?
For me, this is part of that absurdity that Matt talks about, but it's also a signal maybe for something else. It makes me think about a new form of "quiet luxury" in digital design.
There's no real need for a blog to have this feature. It's a deliberate choice, a visualization of Matt's taste, maybe even. So, as I dabble a lot with generative AI in recent years, I'm doing more and more just by generating it. GenAI is great for exploration, but the speed of it also makes it very much like fast fashion. Like Kodak for their cameras said, you state your intent and hit a button, and AI does the rest.
But at least for now, maybe for a long time, I start to think about design as being more about intentional choices. For me, the addition of this over-the-top but also completely logical and additive feature of multiplayer cursor might be some form of taste and luxury we might see more of. It's like a small detail on a high-quality piece of clothing; it's the difference between cheap stitching and cheap fabric. Not really obvious at first glance, but if you touch and use it, it alters your perception.
What do I mean here? "Well, it's not just a prompt like: I want to generate a simple website where users see each other's cursors." The small detail of the flags alters the entire experience. It's like when you look at the details of how a zipper is executed on a rainbow jacket, and you instantly feel how it keeps you dry. It's this added detail, the intention behind it, the slight absurdity compared to how else you could have done it easily, that alters the experience. It shows taste, intention, and personality.
In an ocean of generated visual aesthetics and experiences, maybe the choice, and therefore the taste to intentionally choose the right details, or leave other things out, will add personality to the experience to enjoy joy.
