We Traded Fun for Practicality

Practicality is not only the opposite of impracticality, it is the opposite of individual agency.

Practicality forces a winnowing effect, narrowing a design space until all that we are left with is one magical button that does everything when pressed once. And I mean everything.

In Does Writing Have a Future, Vilem Flusser plainly lays out the tradeoffs our technologies and their users force each other to make: 

As we create more complex technologies that do more, errrr…, stuff (that is the technical term here, yes), the appetite for how business is conducted in reality gets filtered into fewer and fewer options. The fastest, the most profitable, the simplest word economy explanation option always wins. “Don’t waste my time, I must be off as soon as possible to not waste my time elsewhere.”

There is a reason so many sites look and feel so similar. There is no place for bespoke design in a world that is impatient to utility, and perhaps even impatient to its own existence.

In this current dominant language of design there is no room for experimentation, for failure, for “I did it because it felt good”. In this world where the Internet is a commodity and its users are too, simplicity becomes thinking, and thinking becomes a unnecessary luxury. 

Tragedy of the Commodities, I suppose.

...Anyway, let’s get to the updates!

Changelog

In the spirit of the short thesis above, I’ll announce each new feature I built into Your Commonbase this week with whether I think it is a push towards customization or commodification. A scale of personalization vs enshittification, maybe?

Feature One: New Homepage!

Lean: Commodification

The old homepage was really just a log and a counter. The new homepage includes all of the core functions (which were already doable elsewhere) on the homepage.  

I think this makes the design more straightforward, and is more helpful to new users, but isn’t inherently personal and in fact, narrows the design space of the homepage. I did consider adding functionality to customize the order of components, and I still might at some point in the future.

Feature Two: Twenty Questions Agent!

Lean: Customization

I’m really excited by this feature. I’ve been thinking about what makes Claude Code feel so useful, and what I’ve decided is that the utility derives from its ability to make zero to one features based on limited natural language specs backed by comical amounts of compute available combined with the rigid nature of coding. 

The Twenty Questions Agent (inspired by the game I played a kid) is simple, yet powerful. It takes a concept and decomposes it into twenty individual questions. Those questions are then sent off in parallel to find similar entries in YCB. If none are found, it can generate resources from the Web that can be added directly to YCB.

Why do I think this is a customization leaning feature? Simply because at all steps, the agent creates a bespoke output. There will be no entries from user to user that will create the same results! Now thats some Personal Library Science!

Feature Three: Customize the Look and Feel of Companion

Lean: Customization

Inspired by 1990s web design (the bespoke era), you can now change the background image for the entire site, and choose between Courier, Times, and Comic Sans as your site-wide font.

Conclusion

As a piece of technology services more people, it services the individual less. 

Part of this is natural (and to a point, a good thing), and is a sign of a growing, successful operation. But what is slow, or slightly opaque, or bespoke, does not mean it is bad or in need of efficiency. We can’t conflate rapidity with success, lest we end up in the same commodification trap as always.

Best,

Bram

Join the Discord!