spiraling in 2024

First, a warm welcome to new members :) I suspect many of you found your way here from my guest post in

Elan Ullendorff

’s newsletter: Be Specific.

Every year, I do an annual reflection where I write a letter to my past self looking back on my theme for the year and setting an intention for a new theme moving forward. For example, last year I took on motion as my theme.

My 2024 annual reflection is now available on my website (features some interactive elements that Substack doesn’t support, sorry!) Head over there to read it!

http://spencerchang.me/posts/spiraling

---

Lately…

• I attended a wonderful event hosted by Matt and Jess last night to do erasure poetry of computing manifestos. I’d like to borrow / forward a question that Matt asked then to you all: “what one feeling do you want computing to embody moving forward?”

• i’ve been taking a sculpture class at CCSF which has given me the chance to experiment with creating forms and narratives with basic physical materials

  • here’s my in-progress staircase…

    

• I want to facilitate more workshops and events this year… One that came up from the event yesterday is something I’ve been referring to as “perspective of a messenger”

  • The idea is gathering everyone in a circle in groups of 5-10, and one person at a time, cycling every 3-5 minutes, everyone in the circle tries to have a text conversation with the target.

  • The messengers must try their hardest to keep up conversation with said person, constantly sending new messages, and escalating in anger and urgency if they don’t receive timely responses

  • The target must try to pay attention and respond to all conversations.

  • I like the idea of seeing your notification center flood with notifications, something that you likely never experience unless you go viral in something.

  • If you’re interested in attending, let me know in a reply! I’d like to find a space to host this in the next month.

• I’ve been slowly making progress on playhtml, including a little paint job, adding React support and eventing (see the sparks that fly whenever you click that are transmitted for all to see)

  • I’d like to spend some time helping people realize their ideas with this library, so if you feel an urge to try something with it or have a crazy idea of how a shared website would behave, please let me know. I’d love to chat with you and help you make it happen.

with warmth,
Spencer

---

Thank you to everyone who is reading this and to the 632 inboxes subscribed. To support my independent work, please share what you enjoy with someone you love :)

This work is made possible by the 11 people who support me with a monthly sponsorship: Luis, James, Jacky, Jonah, Rachel, Raymond, Dan, Crystal, Max, Gleb, and Eric.