A Colorado town mends its broken bones
Plus, how AI companions exacerbate isolation and a spotlight on New_Public
How does technology affect our individual and communal relationships? While this is not a new question, it has taken on a new urgency as the rate of technological change has far outpaced our personal and societal capacity to adapt.
In this week’s newsletter, we approach this question from a few different angles:
How can communities come back together again after being divided by media-driven political polarization?
Do AI companions mitigate or exacerbate social isolation?
What will it take to create digital spaces that promote human flourishing?
In honor of this week’s technology-forward newsletter, consider taking a technology-backward approach to engaging with it: open up whichever reads strike your fancy, print them out, and read them on a porch swing, rocking chair, or other seat of your choosing.
Also, if there’s been anything else you’ve read that’s helped shape your thinking on technology and relationships, please send your recommendations our way. We’re hoping to continue featuring articles on this topic in the months to come.
With gratitude from your human editors,
Sam, Eric, + David
The Reads
New York Times - “Divided by Politics, a Colorado Town Mends Its Broken Bones” by Jonathan Weisman (Nov. 2023)
If the story of Silverton, CO would have ended in 2021, it would have been yet another story of how national political divisions drove local fissures in a town that once “prided itself on neighbor helping neighbor.” But that wasn’t the end of the story. Over the past two years, the town has started to come back together through an unlikely avenue: a 10-year master planning process. The secret? An intentional commitment by the facilitators, Community Builders Inc., to promote deep listening, rebuild relationships, and foster reconciliation—one community member at a time.
The New Yorker - “Your AI Companion Will Support You No Matter What” by Kyle Chayka (Nov. 2023)
While artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have been around for several years, they have proliferated amidst the recent wave in generative AI. In this article, Chayka asks perhaps the ethical question about these chatbots: do they mitigate isolation or exacerbate it? The answer, here, seems to be found in their business model, which is driven by keeping people dependent upon their AI companions (and out of relationships with other humans).
Harvard Gazette - “Why virtual isn’t actual, especially when it comes to friends” by Liz Mineo (Dec. 2023)
Sherry Turkle, Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology & Self, firmly falls in the camp that believes AI companions are exacerbating isolation. At Harvard’s recent Conference on AI & Democracy, Turkle makes the case that AI companions reduce “our capacity for human empathy” and limit our ability to form the “rich, demanding, and messy” human relationships that are “essential features of the human condition.” She asserts that we need these capacities to “reclaim our communities, our democracies, and our shared common purpose.”
The Work
New_Public - National
New_Public connects designers, technologists, and community-builders to create more flourishing digital public spaces.
New_Public currently has four pillars of its work:
A Digital Spaces Directory, which is a list of digital public spaces that have taken steps to build a public-spirited user experience;
A Community Lab, which focuses on creating and field-testing patterns and features for healthy, public-spirited digital conversational spaces;
A Community Stewards Guild, which is made up of community builders—from online moderators to neighborhood leaders—who foster prosocial online and offline communities; and
A Public Spaces Incubator, which aims to develop and scale conversational spaces that people will use and public broadcasters will own.
Interested in learning more about New_Public? Check out their website—along with this Wired piece and this POLITICO piece—to find out more about their vision and work.
Have feedback on the newsletter? Want to share content for us to feature? Interested in getting involved as a contributor? Email us at theconnectivetissue@gmail.com.