Jonathan Harris has spent a lot of his time observing human behavioral trends on the web and thinking of ways to counteract them.

Here are the 4 trends that Jonathan discusses:

  • Compression – The shortening of communication (communication keeps getting shorter and bite sized)
  • Disposability – Because of volume communications are swallowed up and quickly replaced. There has been a loss of timelessness that once existed.
  • Curation – Self-expression through sharing other people’s work (Sites like Pinterest and Tumblr encourage this behavior)
  • Self-promotion – Social networks are setup for this kind of activity. They encourage users to keep saying, “look what I did.”

A quick look at Jonathan’s bio and you can see how he is working to counteract these trends. He was commissioned by Yahoo! in 2006 to create organize the creation of the ultimate timeless piece with the creation of the world’s largest time capsule. His latest project is Cowbird, a community of storytellers working to build a public library of human experience – encouraging creation over curation.

Via: Curious Brain