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Does all technology exist to mediate human connection? I am using technology in its widest version: brands, institutions, email, workshops, architecture. 

I am postulating that any transaction is secondary to the communication with another person in the process. In times of equilibrium natural resources, creativity, wellbeing, and social systems are in balance.

Interestingly the 20th century did nothing to help us in this trajectory. This was as important in the late 19th century, as it will be in the late 21st century. Scarcity and abundance are closely related, because neither of them is an equilibrium. Abundance and scarcity can be thought of as 1 and 11 on a clock of balance, where equilibrium is the 12 o'clock dial.

And we are currently, as we were in those early days, out of equilibrium. Today’s scarcity is of natural resources, and abundance is of digital technologies.

To reiterate: value exchange is secondary to the exchange of meaning.  In pursuit of a model we can use 1 as full meaning, and 0 as none.
1 = meaningful human exchange, 100% context
0 = complete mediation, all meaning lost 


By accepting this view we appreciate that context is a focal point of meaningful communication, and can never go over 1. Technological innovation, scale, cybernetic ambitions, and even going to space does nothing in increasing the meta (original) meaning. 

A good example of thins is the (original) overview effect. The idea that we need to travel to space to receive an unmediated version of earth. 

No technology would make a meaningful, one to one exchange, any better. This is as true not VR as it is to watching TV. Those will render pseudo-meaning, the opposite of meta–meaning.

I am visually exploring the ideas above through this Figma file

More on this in the coming weeks, I hope. 

With gratitude,
Nitzan
 

@byedit
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