The Resonant Computing Manifesto

There's a feeling you get
in the presence of
beautiful buildings and bustling courtyards.
A sense that these spaces
are inviting you to slow down,
deepen your attention, and be
a bit more human.

What if our software could do the same?

We shape our environments, and thereafter they shape us.

Great technology does more than solve problems. It weaves itself into the world we inhabit. At its best, it can expand our capacity, our connectedness, our sense of what's possible. Technology can bring out the best in us.

Our current technological landscape, however, does the opposite. Feeds engineered to hijack attention and keep us scrolling, leaving a trail of anxiety and atomization in their wake. Digital platforms that increasingly mediate our access to transportation, work, food, dating, commerce, entertainment—while routinely draining the depth and warmth from everything they touch. For all its grandiose promises, modern tech often leaves us feeling alienated, ever more distant from who we want to be.

The people who build these products aren't bad or evil. Most of us got into tech with an earnest desire to leave the world better than we found it. But the incentives and cultural norms of the tech industry have coalesced around the logic of hyper-scale. It's become monolithic, magnetic, all-encompassing—an environment that shapes all who step foot there. While the business results are undeniable, so too are the downstream effects on humanity.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence, we stand at a crossroads. This technology holds genuine promise. It could just as easily pour gasoline on existing problems. If we continue to sleepwalk down the path of hyper-scale and centralization, future generations are sure to inherit a world far more dystopian than our own.

But there is another path opening before us.

Christopher Alexander spent his career exploring why some built environments deaden us, while others leave us feeling more human, more at home in the world. His work centered around the "quality without a name," this intuitive knowing that a place or an architectural element is in tune with life. By learning to recognize this quality, he argued, and constructing a building in dialogue with it, we could reliably create environments that enliven us.

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.

This is where AI provides a missing puzzle piece. Software can now respond fluidly to the context and particularity of each human—at scale. One-size-fits-all is no longer a technological or economic necessity. Where once our digital environments inevitably shaped us against our will, we can now build technology that adaptively shapes itself in service of our individual and collective aspirations. We can build resonant environments that bring out the best in every human who inhabits them.

And so, we find ourselves at this crossroads. Regardless of which path we choose, the future of computing will be hyper-personalized. The question is whether that personalization will be in service of keeping us passively glued to screens—wading around in the shallows, stripped of agency—or whether it will enable us to direct more attention to what matters.

In order to build the resonant technological future we want for ourselves, we will have to resist the seductive logic of hyper-scale, and challenge the business and cultural assumptions that hold it in place. We will have to make deliberate decisions that stand in the face of accepted best practices—rethinking the system architectures, design patterns, and business models that have undergirded the tech industry for decades.

We suggest these five principles as a starting place:

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.

We, the signatories of this manifesto, are committed to building, funding, and championing products and companies that embed these principles at their core. For us, this isn't a theoretical treatise. We're already building tooling and infrastructure that will enable resonant products and ecosystems.

But we cannot do it alone. None of us holds all the answers, and this movement cannot succeed in isolation. That's why, alongside this manifesto, we're sharing an evolving list of principles and theses. These are specific assertions about the implementation details and tradeoffs required to make resonant computing a reality. Some of these stem from our experiences, while others will be crowdsourced from practitioners across the industry. This conversation is only just beginning.

If this vision resonates, we invite you to join us. Not just as a signatory, but as a contributor. Add your expertise, your critiques, your own theses. By harnessing the collective intelligence of people who earnestly care, we can chart a path towards technology that enables individual growth and collective flourishing.

Sign the manifesto

Explore & contribute to the theses of resonant computing

Contributors

The following individuals drafted and released this manifesto:

with illustrations by
Forest Stearns

Signatories

The following individuals have signed in support:

Changelog

Substantive changes that have been made to this manifesto: