Design for the Utopia You Want, Not the Dystopia You're In
summary
Argument: modern products systematically erode user agency via tricks like intermittent variable reward and relentless exposure that shifts the Overton window; one Bitcoin consumes roughly one US house of electricity for 76 days, and a web search shows “dystopia” returns 111 million hits. Concrete fixes tested: ad blockers, prototype fabrics to foil face recognition, and a government team using a maintained design system and laptops to rebuild a pandemic front page quickly — it ships and works under pressure. Actionable asks: specify should_not, run white‑hat misuse tests, and vote.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 8:52Dystopia as a cultural fixation and its consequences
- 17:31Learned helplessness in tech
- 26:48Weaponized attention
- 36:01Psychology of attention
- 44:18Ethics in design
- 47:50User empowerment systems
- 50:40Call to action
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