Bring Back Innovation That Empowers, Rather Than Extracts: The Resonant Computing Manifesto

from the i-hope-this-resonates-with-you dept

Everyone’s pissed at the tech industry. And for good reason. The term enshittification is super popular for many valid reasons. Companies that used to provide real value, are now focused on extracting more value from users, rather than improving their products and services. People used to be excited by new innovations. There was a time when many people felt more fulfilled after using new innovations that helped them do new things, communicate with new people, create new wonderful creations.

That feels like an unfortunately rare experience, so much so that some have forgotten about it entirely.

Remember when you’d use something new and feel… good? Empowered, even? When tech made you feel like you could do more, create more, connect more meaningfully?

Yeah, that’s mostly gone. We’ve replaced it with engagement metrics, growth hacks, and AI slop. The tech industry spent the last decade optimizing for shareholder value and calling it innovation.

But, it doesn’t need to be that way.

We can live in a world where technology works for us, not against us. Where we get value from it, rather than having it extract value from us.

So a group of us—organized by entrepreneur Alex Komoroske, who wrote for us this summer about why centralized AI isn’t inevitable—decided to articulate what the alternative actually looks like. Not just “tech should be better” hand-waving that we sometimes see, but actual principles for building technology that works for people instead of extracting from them.

We’re calling it the Resonant Computing Manifesto, and it’s an attempt to reclaim what innovation should mean:

We call this quality resonance. It’s the experience of encountering something that speaks to our deeper values. It’s a spark of recognition, a sense that we’re being invited to lean in, to participate. Unlike the digital junk food of the day, the more we engage with what resonates, the more we’re left feeling nourished, grateful, alive. As individuals, following the breadcrumbs of resonance helps us build meaningful lives. As communities, companies, and societies, cultivating shared resonance helps us break away from perverse incentives, and play positive-sum infinite games together.

For decades, technology has required standardized solutions to complex human problems. In order to scale software, you had to build for the average user, sanding away the edge cases. In many ways, this is why our digital world has come to resemble the sterile, deadening architecture that Alexander spent his career pushing back against.

That word—resonance—is doing real work here. It’s the opposite of what we’ve got now: software that leaves you feeling depleted, manipulated, or just vaguely dirty. Resonant computing is technology that makes you feel more capable, more connected, more like yourself.

This matters because the current narrative is stuck between two equally bankrupt positions: either all tech is inevitably corrupting, or we should just accelerate harder into whatever the VCs are funding this quarter. Both are bullshit. Tech can be good. It requires building for people rather than metrics. And to get there, we need to call it out and demand it.

I know that some of the more cynical among you will say that techies have always cloaked their efforts in the language of “empowering people” and “changing the world.” We don’t deny that. But we’d like to make it real, and to be able to use this conversation to remind everyone that technology can be good. If it follows certain principles.

So what does that actually mean? The manifesto lays out five principles:

1. Private: In the era of AI, whoever controls the context holds the power. While data often involves multiple stakeholders, people must serve as primary stewards of their own context, determining how it’s used.
2. Dedicated: Software should work exclusively for you, ensuring contextual integrity where data use aligns with your expectations. You must be able to trust there are no hidden agendas or conflicting interests.
3. Plural: No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit. Healthy ecosystems require distributed power, interoperability, and meaningful choice for participants.
4. Adaptable: Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it.
5. Prosocial: Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off.

Notice what’s not in there: no handing over all your data to billionaires, no single solution from a centralized provider, no tech bro buzzwords. What we have here are requirements that take us away from the current ecosystem. Privacy doesn’t mean Mark Zuckerberg has to better protect your data. It means systems where you control your own data. Plural means more than “sprinkle in a few more competitors,” it’s about interoperability and the ability to actually leave with ease.

The “dedicated” principle is particularly important in the age of AI. Your AI tools shouldn’t have dual loyalty to you and to a giant company. It should work for you, period. That seems obvious, but look around: how many products actually meet that bar?

This is also why we’re not just throwing this out there and walking away. Unlike the endless parade of “ethics frameworks” that companies sign onto and promptly ignore, this is meant to be a starting point. It’s kicking off a conversation as well as guidelines for building actual systems. There’s a collaborative doc where people can contribute ideas, and we’ll be talking through what this looks like in practice.

We launched this manifesto yesterday afternoon at Wired’s Big Interview event in San Francisco, and Steven Levy wrote a lovely profile about it, which we spoke about on stage:

Humanity is the glue of the five principles of resonant computing listed in the document. It politely demands that users have control of their tech tools, which should promote social value and true connection. It is, natch, resonant of the idealism that once oozed from every pore of the creators of the early microcomputer revolution and the internet boom, when what was good for the world seemed more important than building scale and maximizing the stock price. “I certainly subscribe to the principles,” says Tim O’Reilly, an early signer who has been urging those same values for years.

Komoroske and his coauthors know that their campaign is only a tiny step toward actually fixing Silicon Valley. “I am under no illusion that some manifesto will magically solve this at all,” he says. (Komoroske himself has cofounded a startup called Common Tools, still in stealth, which presumably will be resonant AF.) Instead, the authors’ goal is to energize and support a new generation of tech professionals who want to be proud of their creations. “When they’re building things, they might start taking these ideas into account,” says Masnick. “And it becomes a tool for people within companies to push back on some of the incentives.”

If nothing else, a few thousand signers would indicate to the idealists that they’re not alone—and some of them might willingly pass on opportunities to make VP and instead make the software that they’d want to use themselves.

There’s the ability to sign onto the manifesto if you’d like. We’ve been thrilled to have folks like Tim O’Reilly, Bruce Schneier, Kevin Kelly and many, many others already sign on. The reaction at the Wired event yesterday from many enthusiastic folks suggested that many more would like to sign on as well.

I’ll have Alex on the Techdirt podcast later today to dig into what this looks like in practice—how you actually build systems that meet these principles, what the tradeoffs are, and why we think this is both necessary and possible.

This was a true group effort, and I want to credit everyone who contributed: Maggie Appleton, Samuel Arbesman, Daniel Barcay, Rob Hardy, Aishwarya Khanduja, Geoffrey Litt, Brendan McCord, Bernhard Seefeld, Ivan Vendrov, Amelia Wattenberger, Zoe Weinberg, and Simon Willison. Our regular meetings brainstorming and discussing all this have been a highlight of this year.

Look, I know manifestos are cheap. They seem to come out every few months. But here’s the thing: we’re at a genuinely weird moment where the biggest players in tech have decided that user empowerment was actually the problem all along. That’s not inevitable. It’s a choice. And we can make different choices.

This feeling has “resonated” with many of the people we’ve shared it with so far, and we hope that it resonates with you as well.

Resonant computing is possible—we’ve experienced it before. The question is whether we’re willing to build it, and whether users will demand it. That’s what this is about: creating a shared language and vision for what better looks like, so we can actually build toward it instead of just complaining about enshittification.

If that resonates with you, and you think that matters, sign the manifesto. Join the conversation. Build a better, more resonant, world.

Filed Under: decentralized, empowerment, innovation, interoperable, plural, privacy, prosocial, resonance, resonant computing