1. What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
2. What habits will the use of this technology instill?
3. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time?
4. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of place?
5. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people?
6. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to the world around me?
7. What practices will the use of this technology cultivate?
8. What practices will the use of this technology displace?
9. What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
10. What will the use of this technology encourage me to ignore?
11. What was required of other human beings so that I might be able to use this technology?
12. What was required of other creatures so that I might be able to use this technology?
13. What was required of the earth so that I might be able to use this technology?
14. Does the use of this technology bring me joy?
15. Does the use of this technology arouse anxiety?
16. How does this technology empower me? At whose expense?
17. What feelings does the use of this technology generate in me toward others?
18. Can I imagine living without this technology? Why, or why not?
19. How does this technology encourage me to allocate my time?
20. Could the resources used to acquire and use this technology be better deployed?
21. Does this technology automate or outsource labor or responsibilities that are morally essential?
22. What desires does the use of this technology generate?
23. What desires does the use of this technology dissipate?
24. What possibilities for action does this technology present? Is it good that these actions are now possible?
25. What possibilities for action does this technology foreclose? Is it good that these actions are no longer possible?
26. How does the use of this technology shape my vision of a good life?
27. What limits does the use of this technology impose upon me?
28. What limits does my use of this technology impose upon others?
29. What does my use of this technology require of others who would (or must) interact with me?
30. What assumptions about the world does the use of this technology tacitly encourage?
31. What knowledge has the use of this technology disclosed to me about myself?
32. What knowledge has the use of this technology disclosed to me about others? Is it good to have this knowledge?
33. What are the potential harms to myself, others, or the world that might result from my use of this technology?
34. Upon what systems, technical or human, does my use of this technology depend? Are these systems just?
35. Does my use of this technology encourage me to view others as a means to an end?
36. Does using this technology require me to think more or less?
37. What would the world be like if everyone used this technology exactly as I use it?
38. What risks will my use of this technology entail for others? Have they consented?
39. Can the consequences of my use of this technology be undone? Can I live with those consequences?
40. Does my use of this technology make it easier to live as if I had no responsibilities toward my neighbor?
41. Can I be held responsible for the actions which this technology empowers? Would I feel better if I couldn’t?

(Do Artifacts Have Ethics, L.M. Sacasas)

• What is the totality of its effects, its “ecology”?
• How does it affect our perception of our needs?
• How does it affect our way of seeing and experiencing the world?
• Does it foster a diversity of forms of knowledge?
• What does it make?
• What does it allow us to ignore?
• Is it the least imposing technology available for the task?
• Can it be responsive to organic circumstance?
• Does it concentrate or equalize power?
• Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
• Does it cause ugliness?
• What noise does it make?
• What pace does it set?
• […]

(From 76 Reasonable Questions to ask about any technology by Jacques Ellul)

1. “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”
2. “Whose problem is it?”
3. “Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
4. “What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”
5. “What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
6. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”

(Neil Postman)

Argeïphontes Lyre
A sound editing software with ideosyncratic interface principles that breaks with paradigms of remediation, real-life metaphors and ease-of-use.
Mac App Store
Article about the interface by Lasse Prang (in German)

Argeïphontes Recalcitrance
“… the art of file names. A rather fine collection of file names and file name filters implemented most tastefully.”
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/

http://www.akirarabelais.com/

“The prominent apps and sites often share a common element today; the feed. It looks like Facebook’s timeline, or Buzzfeed’s homepage—an endlessly updating stream of content, designed to keep you returning, and spending more time.

You frequently hear of us feeling burnt out by this “drinking from a firehose.” Of course, these products know that, and are increasingly implementing steps to filter what you see and what you don’t based in part on what keeps you returning—a perpetually shifting mix, resulting in what has become known as the filter bubble, FOMO, and other things.

Hardly Everything attempts to circumnavigate these corporate feeds by supplying you with an anti-feed.”

https://hello.hardlyeverything.com

“The Feminist Search Tool is a digital interface that invites users to explore different ways of engaging with the records of the Utrecht University Library, putting forward the question: Why are the authors of the books I read so white, so male, so Eurocentric?”

http://feministsearchtool.nl

By http://read-in.info

“PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES AS EXPERIMENTS, JOKES, AND EXPERIENTIAL ART

esolangs, disruptive codes, weird hc/i, differential thought platforms, the digital ephemeral, null programs and deletions, unstable linguistics, structure as content, machine disobedience, new relationships between programmers and their primary progeny (bugs), useless machines (Shannon/Minksy), synthetic languages, circuitous systems, constraint sets for coders, paraconsistent calculi, and other platforms, systems, and languages that break from the norms of computing”

http://esoteric.codes

http://bak.spc.org/iod/index.html

“THE CRITICAL INTERFACE TOOLBOX unfolds as an online resource that exposes experimental methodologies, practices, and tools aimed at enhancing critical thought towards the actual configuration of the Interface.”

https://crit.hangar.org/toolbox/

–

Manifesto for a critical approach to the user interface

“Socratic Search is a speculative search engine based upon the principles of Socractic Questioning, and built on Google Custom Search technology. Replacing a single search button with multiple search options. It’s aim is to guide users into a deeper, more disciplined ways of questioning the worlds information that Google organises and returns to us every day.”

http://www.ted-hunt.com/SOCRATES.html
http://www.ted-hunt.com/Socrates/

“A workshop and ongoing research project which uses Sir John Soane’s unrealised architectural speculation ‘Design for an Entrance to London’ (c 1805) as a means to reimagine how we directly access and perceive the internet as the modern equivalent to the living organism of a city. The workshop questions how we might do this in a way that more critically considers the role access to the internet plays in authoring our interpretation of reality, our shared values, our social potential and human evolution.”

http://designforanentrancetotheinternet.com

“Contra-Internet engages the emerging militancies and subversions of “the Internet,” such as the global proliferation of autonomous mesh networks, encryption tactics, and darknets. Contra-Internet aims to function as a conceptual, practical, and experimental framework for refusing the neoliberal logic of “the Internet” while building alternatives to its infrastructure.”

http://dismagazine.com/discussion/73352/zach-blas-contra-internet/

Let’s focus is an example for a bunch of visualization tools, that should streamline and raise efficiency of communication processes in the context of management and business. The improved productivity is proofed with scientific studies (see Prof. Martin Eppler). The tool is interesting as it provides a set of (partly weird) visual metaphors that want to enable people without special “visual competence” to take structured notes of meetings e.g. Maybe the tendency to formalize and exploit a kind of visual thinking / diagrammatic reasoning for means of productivity.

http://de.lets-focus.com

“Something about how maps can reveal everyday practices of power.” Some examples of critical projections and mapping techniques.

http://www.radicalcartography.net/