If you wanted to make a profile to talk about yourself, or to show off your work, you had to create your own personal webpage, which others could visit.
This reminds me of the stories my mother would tell me about the internet before it evolved. She described a time when the online world was less structured, often experimental, and far removed from the interconnected digital landscape we know today. Those earlier experiences reflect a simpler, more exploratory phase of online communication.
In these message boards, users attempt to troll each other and post the most shocking content they can come up with.
4chan is notorious for its association with "incel" subcultures and the promotion of hateful ideologies. The platform's anonymity often enables users to post misogynistic, racist, and otherwise harmful content without accountability. Its forums have been criticized for amplifying extremist views.
Now, there are many reasons one might be suspicious about utilitarianism as a cheat code for acting morally, but let’s assume for a moment that utilitarianism is the best way to go. When you undertake your utility calculus, you are, in essence, gathering and responding to data about the projected outcomes of a situation. This means that how you gather your data will affect what data you come up with.
This is interesting because it shows how important the information is when applying utilitarianism to decision-making. Even if the goal is to improve happiness, our decisions may turn out to be unethical if the evidence is inaccurate or lacking. It makes me wonder if utilitarianism can be used as an accurate moral code. Also, the results may not be accurate if the data is incomplete or unfair.
Only in Oman has the occasional donkey…been used as a mobile billboard to express anti-regime sentiments.
I find it interesting how certain symbols, like the donkey in this example, can represent resilience. These symbols are used quite creatively to show resistance or defiance. They can hold powerful messages that challenge authority in unexpected ways. Another example of this would be the watermelon emoji used to represent the Palestinian people on social media.
For example, instead of viewing a pizza delivery app as a way to get pizza faster and more easily, we might view it as a way of supporting the independence of elderly who do not have the mobility to pick up a pizza on their own. Or, perhaps more darkly, instead of viewing TSA screening at an airport a way of identifying potential terrorists, we consider it through the value of power, as the screening process had more to do with maintaining political power in times of fear than it did with actually preventing terrorism
These examples really put into perspective the countless different ways that a design model can be perceived and used. This is why having empathy for the users of your design matters so much. It is crucial to understand what people you are designing for and why. It is also important to consider the implications of a design that doesn't cater to a wide audience.
In a way, all of these skills are fundamentally about empathy55 Wright, P., & McCarthy, J. (2008). Empathy and experience in HCI. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI). , because they all require a designer to see problems and solutions from other people’s perspectives, whether these people are users, other designers, or people in other roles, such as marketers, engineers, project managers, etc.
This statement stood out to me because the design process itself involves a lot of thinking about other people. For example, Stanford's design thinking process uses "empathize" as its first element. Designing things requires empathy, and without it, many designs will fail. Being able to recognize when a design is incompatible with those who may use it is extremely important in this field.