Seriously, I like these ideas a lot. But/and also, the GNU Manifesto strikes me as ultimately "extremely similar but perhaps clearer," with the added bonus of having arguable "real life teeth," given that it was the inspiration for the GPL.
Cue somewhat understandable, yet still perhaps annoying, discussions of "Stallman the person."
It's a lovely idea, but so far all software personalization I can think of (in the sense of software adapting to the individual, rather than the individual adapting their software à la malleable software) has been weaponized against the user rather than used to support them. Occasional attempts in the other direction like adaptive user interfaces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_user_interface) tend to fail because they break habit formation (c.f. Raskin)
The author's context of technology seems to be limited to the idea of software and screens.
Let's take a wider view. A pencil is a technology to someone from the 1500s.
A watch is a technology to someone from the 1700s.
The network (web) has already integrated into our lives. The screen is the point of distraction and there are many people actively finding ways to move away from that.
When I look at the proposed principles, I don't see how that makes computing any more "resonant".
Computing will continue to meld into our lives and will continue to be more and more basic. Children today don't think about "going online" like those of us around the birth of the internet did. Those born today won't think twice about an AI assistant that is ever present.
I feel like the goals of this manifesto may be orthogonal to their stated aims. Or maybe I completely miss the point.
My understanding was that Christopher Alexander called the quality without a name "wholeness" later in their life. Does it mean a different thing than the "resonance" in this article?
I think manifestos are useless without a concrete, real-world example for people to follow and add on to. It's easy to wish for puppies and rainbows, but trying to deliver is hard.
For example, Linear has a useful manifesto (https://linear.app/method) because they have a product that attempts to follows it. I have much more respect for a manifesto that is informed by contact with reality.
> because they have a product that attempts to follows it.
I had no idea what linear.app was. Then I followed your link.
Then I had no idea what linear.app was. Then I went to their front page.
Then I had no idea what linear.app was.
Manifestos are fine. My personal one is that, if I can't tell immediately from your front page what the fuck it is that you do, then we aren't compatible.
I agree, but I always assume manifestos are distillations from experience.
Is it that you want to be able to inspect the experience that informs it side-by-side, in case-studies or product or something?
I take it for granted that you're not sceptical of the authors experience, because lord knows there's some experience behind the contributors and signatories :)
Maggie Appleton
Samuel Arbesman
Daniel Barcay
Rob Hardy
Aishwarya Khanduja
Alex Komoroske
Geoffrey Litt
Michael Masnick
Brendan McCord
Bernhard Seefeld
Ivan Vendrov
Amelia Wattenberger
Zoe Weinberg
Simon Willison
I'm used to manifestos being a call to action or, at least, an explanation of intentions. But if the signers are intent on changing the world, I don't have a concrete view of what world they plan on creating.
"people must serve as primary stewards of their own context": What does this mean? People must be able to change the system prompt whenever they want? Or does "their own context" just mean "their own prompt" but not the system prompt? Does this mean everyone needs to run a local model?
"You must be able to trust there are no hidden agendas or conflicting interests.": Any transaction has conflicting interests. I want to pay as little as possible for software, but I want my salary as a software engineer to be as high as possible. How are they planning on eliminating that conflict?
"No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit.": What do they mean by a "digital space"? Do they mean the Internet? If so, then this is already true: no single entity controls the internet. Do they mean any web app that I might use? If I put up a personal blog can I be the only one who controls it? What if my blog gets really popular?
"Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it." Also, it should take 0 time to manage, solve any problem I might have, and be absolutely free.
"Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off." This was literally the original dream of the internet. We thought a global network that connected everyone would lead to peace and prosperity. We all agree that it hasn't. No one has any idea how to achieve this other than banning it.
I'm sure we can come up with answers to each one of these questions. But my point is that the manifesto doesn't tell us. We don't know what they have in mind, which makes me suspicious that either (a) they don't know either, or (b) I might not like the answer.
Something has to change from the advertising centric, attention hijacking drain that current technology is circling. I agree with one of the other posts here that some examples of software that adhere to these principles would be a welcome addition. I think that list would include a lot of open source software and not a lot of social media software.
This seems a tad ambiguous and fails to touch upon some key issues. What does it mean for software to "respond fluidly". What does "technology that adapts itself" mean?. This manifesto paints a negative picture of the current "software environment" or "technological landscape", clearly with social media in mind, but then attempts to solve the situation with "ai will solve it bro, dont worry about it, just as long as theres rainbows and we all care for each other maaaan" :)
I'm sure the authors believe they are saying something important, but there is absolutely nothing concrete referenced by this "manifesto". No prior art, no examples, nothing actually specific to "computing".
I'm not trying to be harsh - I do agree with their five bullet points - but as written it's all romanticism and no practicality.
For comparison, here's a bullet point I'd put on my own "manifesto":
----------
Feeds must be finite, relevant, and consumable.
A "feed" - a regularly updated list of content that the user is interested in - is in principle a great way to spread information and connect people to authors and creators.
As they are currently implemented though, they are biased towards maximizing "addiction" instead of productivity. Endless feeds that mix slop and advertising along with the occasional nugget of relevance encourage only endless scrolling in the hope that there will be another hit of dopamine on the next page.
Ethical feeds should follow a few main guidelines:
1. The number of items in the feed should match the number of items generated by the feed's sources. No inserting "You might be interested in..." articles between feed items. No inline sponsored advertisements. No random unrelated news clippings selected for maximum engagement. No clickbait short videos or misleading "one weird tricks" allowed. The feed must be allowed to run dry.
2. All feed items must be viewable in chronological order with no duplications or omissions. If my feed is backed by 50 sources, then my viewing tool must fetch the latest items from all sources and sort them by date. Omitting or reordering "small" items like "We just had a baby!" because some algorithm predicts that they would be less impactful than "Apple releases new MacOS27" is forbidden.
3. All feed items must be easily "consumable". If I mark an item as "read", it must never show up in my feed again. If I save it to some collection of important notes, it should never show up in my feed again . I must always be able to get to the feed equivalent of "inbox zero" without doing anything other than starting at the top and scrolling to the bottom. I should never have to chase my feed across multiple pages or tabs to read it completely.
----------
The above is an actionable, opinionated definition of how feeds "should work", and the requirements are sufficiently clear to determine whether any particular piece of software obeys these rules.
That, to me, is a useful manifesto. Perhaps too far on the practical side, but I'm an inherently practical dude.
Stallman was right?
Seriously, I like these ideas a lot. But/and also, the GNU Manifesto strikes me as ultimately "extremely similar but perhaps clearer," with the added bonus of having arguable "real life teeth," given that it was the inspiration for the GPL.
Cue somewhat understandable, yet still perhaps annoying, discussions of "Stallman the person."
It's a lovely idea, but so far all software personalization I can think of (in the sense of software adapting to the individual, rather than the individual adapting their software à la malleable software) has been weaponized against the user rather than used to support them. Occasional attempts in the other direction like adaptive user interfaces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_user_interface) tend to fail because they break habit formation (c.f. Raskin)
Conceptually nice, but I don't know what this looks like in practice. An "examples" section is sorely needed.
The author's context of technology seems to be limited to the idea of software and screens.
Let's take a wider view. A pencil is a technology to someone from the 1500s. A watch is a technology to someone from the 1700s.
The network (web) has already integrated into our lives. The screen is the point of distraction and there are many people actively finding ways to move away from that.
When I look at the proposed principles, I don't see how that makes computing any more "resonant".
Computing will continue to meld into our lives and will continue to be more and more basic. Children today don't think about "going online" like those of us around the birth of the internet did. Those born today won't think twice about an AI assistant that is ever present.
I feel like the goals of this manifesto may be orthogonal to their stated aims. Or maybe I completely miss the point.
My understanding was that Christopher Alexander called the quality without a name "wholeness" later in their life. Does it mean a different thing than the "resonance" in this article?
I think manifestos are useless without a concrete, real-world example for people to follow and add on to. It's easy to wish for puppies and rainbows, but trying to deliver is hard.
For example, Linear has a useful manifesto (https://linear.app/method) because they have a product that attempts to follows it. I have much more respect for a manifesto that is informed by contact with reality.
> because they have a product that attempts to follows it.
I had no idea what linear.app was. Then I followed your link.
Then I had no idea what linear.app was. Then I went to their front page.
Then I had no idea what linear.app was.
Manifestos are fine. My personal one is that, if I can't tell immediately from your front page what the fuck it is that you do, then we aren't compatible.
I agree, but I always assume manifestos are distillations from experience.
Is it that you want to be able to inspect the experience that informs it side-by-side, in case-studies or product or something?
I take it for granted that you're not sceptical of the authors experience, because lord knows there's some experience behind the contributors and signatories :)
Maggie Appleton Samuel Arbesman Daniel Barcay Rob Hardy Aishwarya Khanduja Alex Komoroske Geoffrey Litt Michael Masnick Brendan McCord Bernhard Seefeld Ivan Vendrov Amelia Wattenberger Zoe Weinberg Simon Willison
I'm used to manifestos being a call to action or, at least, an explanation of intentions. But if the signers are intent on changing the world, I don't have a concrete view of what world they plan on creating.
"people must serve as primary stewards of their own context": What does this mean? People must be able to change the system prompt whenever they want? Or does "their own context" just mean "their own prompt" but not the system prompt? Does this mean everyone needs to run a local model?
"You must be able to trust there are no hidden agendas or conflicting interests.": Any transaction has conflicting interests. I want to pay as little as possible for software, but I want my salary as a software engineer to be as high as possible. How are they planning on eliminating that conflict?
"No single entity should control the digital spaces we inhabit.": What do they mean by a "digital space"? Do they mean the Internet? If so, then this is already true: no single entity controls the internet. Do they mean any web app that I might use? If I put up a personal blog can I be the only one who controls it? What if my blog gets really popular?
"Software should be open-ended, able to meet the specific, context-dependent needs of each person who uses it." Also, it should take 0 time to manage, solve any problem I might have, and be absolutely free.
"Technology should enable connection and coordination, helping us become better neighbors, collaborators, and stewards of shared spaces, both online and off." This was literally the original dream of the internet. We thought a global network that connected everyone would lead to peace and prosperity. We all agree that it hasn't. No one has any idea how to achieve this other than banning it.
I'm sure we can come up with answers to each one of these questions. But my point is that the manifesto doesn't tell us. We don't know what they have in mind, which makes me suspicious that either (a) they don't know either, or (b) I might not like the answer.
Some people looked at some of the authors background:
https://gameboat.bearblog.dev/the-resonant-computing-manifes...
There are actually things to be very skeptical about.
I’m a fan of the goal here, would be interested to see what initiatives folks are envisioning to get us there, as it were
Glad to see this getting another round of discussion. It was barely discussed when it was released ~2+ months ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46163347
Simon Willison is a cosigner, and posted on his blog the day it was released:
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/resonant-computing/
Something has to change from the advertising centric, attention hijacking drain that current technology is circling. I agree with one of the other posts here that some examples of software that adhere to these principles would be a welcome addition. I think that list would include a lot of open source software and not a lot of social media software.
This seems a tad ambiguous and fails to touch upon some key issues. What does it mean for software to "respond fluidly". What does "technology that adapts itself" mean?. This manifesto paints a negative picture of the current "software environment" or "technological landscape", clearly with social media in mind, but then attempts to solve the situation with "ai will solve it bro, dont worry about it, just as long as theres rainbows and we all care for each other maaaan" :)
I'm sure the authors believe they are saying something important, but there is absolutely nothing concrete referenced by this "manifesto". No prior art, no examples, nothing actually specific to "computing".
I'm not trying to be harsh - I do agree with their five bullet points - but as written it's all romanticism and no practicality.
For comparison, here's a bullet point I'd put on my own "manifesto":
----------
Feeds must be finite, relevant, and consumable.
A "feed" - a regularly updated list of content that the user is interested in - is in principle a great way to spread information and connect people to authors and creators.
As they are currently implemented though, they are biased towards maximizing "addiction" instead of productivity. Endless feeds that mix slop and advertising along with the occasional nugget of relevance encourage only endless scrolling in the hope that there will be another hit of dopamine on the next page.
Ethical feeds should follow a few main guidelines:
1. The number of items in the feed should match the number of items generated by the feed's sources. No inserting "You might be interested in..." articles between feed items. No inline sponsored advertisements. No random unrelated news clippings selected for maximum engagement. No clickbait short videos or misleading "one weird tricks" allowed. The feed must be allowed to run dry.
2. All feed items must be viewable in chronological order with no duplications or omissions. If my feed is backed by 50 sources, then my viewing tool must fetch the latest items from all sources and sort them by date. Omitting or reordering "small" items like "We just had a baby!" because some algorithm predicts that they would be less impactful than "Apple releases new MacOS27" is forbidden.
3. All feed items must be easily "consumable". If I mark an item as "read", it must never show up in my feed again. If I save it to some collection of important notes, it should never show up in my feed again . I must always be able to get to the feed equivalent of "inbox zero" without doing anything other than starting at the top and scrolling to the bottom. I should never have to chase my feed across multiple pages or tabs to read it completely.
----------
The above is an actionable, opinionated definition of how feeds "should work", and the requirements are sufficiently clear to determine whether any particular piece of software obeys these rules.
That, to me, is a useful manifesto. Perhaps too far on the practical side, but I'm an inherently practical dude.