Technology at a human scale matters.

How technologies are implemented and how they shape our behaviors are valuable questions to ponder now even more than at the turn of the last century. Our information economy demands technology that can perform highly complex tasks.

It is truly wondrous. In many respects, we live in a science fictional world.

But the human costs of these technologies can be crushing.

• Chatbots enable personalized attention but are more often than not a source of great frustration for customers who just want to talk to another person.

• Online advertising has the ability to target only those people to whom it is directly relevant but seldom does so in the rush for greater "reach" and "more eyeballs."

• Social media platforms connect us as never before but they seem to be equally good at dividing us and insulating us from real growth, even facts.

Where is the humanity? Where are the communities?

A return to community

And yet somehow, despite the amalgamation of the Internet into a series of overly large corporate concerns which have dominated discourse, the essential human promise of technology to connect us in meaningful ways persists.

Ever since the listservs and discussion forums of the 70s and 80s, online communities have persisted in spite of outsized commercial interests. Often using minimalist technology with subpar user experiences, these platforms continued to enable geographically dispersed individuals with strong common interests to meet, discuss, share, laugh, and create value.

And like a clock tower, these platforms defined the rhythms of a town square, a commons of people drawn together by their interests and provided them with the means to stay connected and creative.

The technologies matured. Discussion forums remain a viable form of community platform to this day. They now work alongside private social media-style communities and chat-like Slack or Microsoft Teams communities.

The user experiences are far better than they used to be. The bell tolls on.

Trust over technology

Clocktower Advisors is dedicated to the idea that the technologies we use and adopt should not be a means unto themselves. They are only so valuable as their ability to help build trust, connection, meaning, and a sense of belonging.

Community-enabling technologies are a far cry from marketing websites and web-based advertising. These approaches have their place, of course.

But the promise of the internet is, was, and always will be its ability to transcend our physical barriers and help us to make each other smile, to expand our knowledge, to inspire us to create new and wonderful things.

Easter Egg: a “secret” page of clock towers previously featured in our weekly newsletter