Bulletin Board: Pilots, Muse, and Slow Technology

Welcome back to New_ Public’s Bulletin Board, where we share the best of what the prosocial internet has to offer and build connections among technologists, builders, funders, designers, engineers, researchers, community leaders, and anyone else who wants to make the web more public-spirited and healthy. ✨

There’s so much to look forward to: chicago.com is starting to unfold in different parts of the city, and our new residents will start our pilot virtual residency. Plus, you know, Halloween and autumn leaves. Welcome to fall! 🍂🎃🥧

Speaking of the residents, we got over 600 applications for our Entrepreneur in Residence pilot program! We think the public and moral imagination of these emerging leaders has been under-invested in, and we’re excited to continue lifting up prosocial innovators and entrepreneurs. More about the program and these new residents will be coming soon!

Announcing the first pilot communities for chicago.compowered by Roundabout and Chicago Public Media: Avondale, Bronzeville, Edgewater, Evanston, and South Shore. Each pilot will be supported by a local community steward who lives in the neighborhood and serves members as a trusted community leader and caretaker. Alongside Kasiana McLenaghan, interim General Manager for chicago.comthe stewards are already sharing great ideas about how to build an online space that’ll best serve their local communities and — eventually — all of Chicagoland!

From **chicago.com**’s first meeting of stewards and the support team! Top row from left to right: stewards Chris, Rashanah, Kathy, Maddie, Nathalie, along with New_ Public’s Kasiana McLenaghan | Front row from left to right: Al Keefe from Chicago Public Media, with Darryl and Anika of Commoner Co.

Following our last newsletter with Jonathan Stray and Renée DiResta, New_ Public’s Head of Editorial Josh Kramer walks us through MySkya tool that not only lets you customize your feed but also shows WHY certain posts show up in the order that they do (available just on Bluesky, for now):

Our communities have no dedicated way to communicate – whether it’s about the week’s food delivery, where to get help with a utility bill, or news about the business opening down the street. There are no public pipes for the flow of civic news and information. The Jersey Bee exists to be exactly that: local public infrastructure for the people who need it most.

Giorgia Lupi’s NYT opinion piece, “In Defense of the Detour”makes the case that the “slow part” of discovery, listening, and thinking can’t be outsourced or made more efficient with AI. But AI can support creative work after humans do the thinking and discovery.

Meta (yes, the same Meta that recently settled its child safety case with nearly every state and territory and that is reportedly using data centers to avoid paying taxes) just launched a new product: a personal AI agent, Muse, that can act as your personal assistant — and also apparently gain access to your unshared personal information. 🙃

We like to use this space to remind folks that not only are there great alternatives to mainstream social media apps and tools out there, we have a directory of over 300 of them that anyone can submit to!

A treat for (alleged) bad texters, pen pal writers, Merlin Bird ID users, or maybe all of the above: Roost is a messaging app where messages travel at the speed of … a turtle, snail, carrier pigeon, or any other bird you’d like to send from your digital rookery. 🐢🐌💨

Roost was intentionally built with slow technology in mind:

Slow tech is about choosing when technology gets your attention, not giving technology up. We aren’t anti-tech at Roost. We love technology most when it earns its place: when it helps two people find each other, carries something meaningful between them, and then gets out of the way.

Similarly, we’re also big fans of the concept of calm technology.

Members of Roundaboutour local community app, have been successfully building community, neighbor by neighbor. But a new problem emerged: now that Roundabout offered access to a wider network of neighbors, there was an increasing need to connect one-on-one within the platform, with folks looking to schedule coffee chats, arrange free item pickups, and offer personal referrals. While the Roundabout team didn’t want members to have to share personal or sensitive information in public, they also didn’t want to create a system, like traditional direct messaging, that could become a vector for spam and abuse.

In response to these community needs, the team’s elegant solution has recently launched across all Roundabout communities: Direct Replies. Community members can now choose to answer a post or thread directly to the person they’re replying to, without it being visible to everyone in the space. Every Direct Reply still runs through our AI-powered pre-moderationwhere users always have the option for human, steward review.

Now members can arrange to give things away on Roundabout. Stewards are also really appreciating the flexibility to be able to send a private note, and some began using the feature immediately. As more and more people try out Roundabout, the team continues to evolve the platform and deliver more useful and helpful features.

We’re excited to continue building in public and sharing our learnings!

So happy we stumbled upon InternetHistoryRoulette.com 🎲 A tribute to the early internet, the spinning wheel drops users onto a random archived page from the 1990s and early 2000s thanks to the Wayback Machine archive. It’ll also show you little pop-up facts about the site you’re on — be sure to have sound on for peak nostalgia. 🖥️ 🌐