designing for humans
“Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.”
Richard Stallman
Open-Source Everything!
At Social Systems Lab, we’re work from the basis of a few core principles or guiding beacons. Our goal is that all our products and projects aline with the following:
Open Source and Transparency
Secrecy is a benefit to all things private but detrimental to all things public. If we are to build common systems they must be open systems. This means transparency in all verticals, from hpw we code and construct to how we deploy and distribute. Our work is built by the community, for the community. Inspired by Richard Stallman’s philosophy, our goal is ultimately to make everything freely available—no gatekeepers, no hidden agendas.
Centralization stifles innovation. It means placing our data, faith and trust in third parties, who invariably fall short as some point. To be self-sovereign is to have the freedom to walk away yet retain all our social connections and all our information. This can only be achieved through a decentralized peer-to-peer based architecture. Our goal is therefore to empower individuals to control their own data and decisions.
Decentralization and Self-Sovereignty
Tools Over Rules
Rules are useful but they are also optional. Rules can be enforced, but they can also be gamed or simply ignored. If human nature dictates one course of action and the rules another, well good luck with that one, rules. Well-designed tools, on the other hand, shape behavior far more reliably than rules. We therefore seek to create systems that incentivize pro-social actions, giving communities the power to thrive.
If we are going to build tools that are useful to humans, we need to understand ourselves. We also need to be aware of the “perverse incentives” that turn the best intended products into the worst types of limbic system hijackers. Our focus is to build technology based on human psychology, not to manipulate for maximal profit but to foster self-awareness and sovereignty inviting connection, altruism, and community.
Human-Aligned Algorithms
Simplicity and Accessibility
The more complicated something, be it thing, system or person, the less likely we are to interact with it. In the cost-benefit balance, it just doesn’t seem worth it. The brain is a lazy beast. The most powerful tools are the simplest. We therefore prioritize clarity and ease of use and let complexity emerge organically from intuitive systems.
Innumerable well-intended projects and products have collapsed under their own lack of structural integrity, usually of the financial variety. If a system can not carry itself, it is doomed to gather dust along with its countless historical peers. We design systems to be self-sustaining, while steering clear of external interests like ads or data mining, ensuring long-term integrity and independence.
Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency
Noise Reduction and Information Integrity
The worst contaminant in the age of information is noise. The level of noise over signal in our current era is so bad that the term the age of spectacle would be more appropriate, and it is only going to get worse. We take the rising clamour of noise quite seriously and look for ways to cut through the noise and misinformation, providing tools that surface trustworthy, relevant data. Trust is valuable. Trust is everything. Trust is earned.