Tally takes a slightly different approach to other form builders in that the building is mostly done within a simple text interface, not unlike editing a Notion document. In fact, you can embed it almost seamlessly into Notion.

A collaborative online whiteboard that provides “an infinite canvas for teams to work together, visually”. You can follow each others’ cursors in real time as you move around the shared visual space while a built-in video/audio call feature allows you to discuss what you’re doing.

The Markup, a digital publication that shines a critical light on technology, keeps producing interesting new tools that help us understand our social media use. The Split Screen offers a snapshot of Facebook’s news feed from two very different angles, that of a Biden and that of a Trump voter.

“Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of most buildings in the five boroughs of New York City.” They recently put them on a digital map for us to explore online. What a marvellous time hop!

Beyond Sticky Notes →

Making co-design work

The notion of ‘co-design’ – of involving all stakeholders in the creative process to make outcomes truly inclusive – is gaining momentum. Australian author Kelly Ann McKercher recently published a practical book on how to make co-design a reality: “Beyond Sticky Notes teaches you what co-design is and how to do it. Packed full of useful tips, clear diagrams, and practical frameworks, this book will help you lead collaborative design work, and genuinely share power.”

Material World →

The things we own

I saw this fascinating book in a second-hand bookshop recently: more than a dozen photographers visited over 30 nations around the world to take a portrait of statistically average families. “At the end of each visit, photographer and family collaborated on a remarkable portrait of the family members outside their home, surrounded by all of their possessions – a few jars and jugs for some, an explosion of electronic gadgetry for others. [The book] puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption as it illuminates the crucial question facing our species today: Can all six billion of us have all the things we want?” Published in the mid ’90s, I wonder what a current-day family portrait would look like. (A preview of some of the photos here.)

During my first visit to the US, I struggled to come to terms with the oversizing of everything, but it was the size of cars that felt most baffling and intimidating. Since then ‘pickup trucks’ evolved to become even more threatening in their appearance. “In a widely shared 2018 journal article, Daggett coined the term ‘petro-masculinity’ to describe flamboyant expressions of fossil fuel use by men (and some women as well, but mostly men) as a reaction against social progress. To these drivers, ‘the affront of global warming or environmental regulations appear as insurgents on par with the dangers posed by feminists and queer movements seeking to leach energy and power from the state/traditional family,’ she wrote. Petro-masculinity helps explain not only these vehicles’ confrontational styling, but the often equally belligerent way in which they are operated.”

In this three-minute essay, Joshua Adams manages to summarise my thoughts on Elon Musk (and other tech billionaires) almost perfectly. Very worth your time: “In some ways, Musk is the quintessence of how we think innovation works – the singular genius within a larger progress narrative that ‘proves’ the power of the individual and the market. Behind this guile is often billions and billions in government subsidies. Innovationism makes us forget that we fund the development of all the cool thingamajigs that goes into our iPhones and then we have to buy the iPhone, ostensibly paying for it twice.” (Possible soft paywall)

I’ve read my fair share of ‘social media is bad for you’ articles over the years but the people on the other side of that struggle make an even stronger argument than the research-based NYT pieces on the matter. “This is great that we’re all interconnected, and amazing what we can do online. But then you start to notice what adds up to net negatives. You realize, do I even have the time or attention to read a book any more? Do I even have the time or attention required to read an article?”

We take trees and forests for granted, assuming they’ll be here long after we’re gone. According to a growing chorus of scientists and forestry experts, the demise of forests around the globe is accelerating at a much faster pace than previously thought. “There are worries that if forests die back they will switch from storing carbon to emitting it, because dead trees will release all the carbon they have accumulated. This helps explain why much-touted proposals to plant millions of trees to suck up carbon and ameliorate the climate crisis are encountering skepticism; they won’t work if conditions on Earth don’t allow for forests to reproduce and thrive.”