Enjoyment always requires attention. It’s just that some pleasures force your attention to them, and most don’t. Depending on these attention-forcing sources of pleasure leads to a preoccupation with the more intense ones, which tend to be sugary, intoxicating, mind-rotting, or costly in some other way.

I hold a conspiracy theory the global economy died five years ago during Covid. It’s been on life support through stimulus checks and flash tech hype cycles ever since trying to keep the dormant heart beating. You sense it too. There’s no beating heart. There’s no thumping energy. No vein of excitement. Tech and knowledge work seems to be suffering the most.

Throughout history, there have been design movements and design practices that have been anticapitalist, antagonizing the capitalist system, or noncapitalist, operating outside the basic logics of capitalism. These “alternative designs” have created ongoing tensions and dialogue with capitalist forms of design. There are also historical and contemporary precedents that demonstrate some elements of postcapitalist design.

An interesting collection of anti-capitalist design stuff.