[HN Gopher] The Resonant Computing Manifesto
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The Resonant Computing Manifesto
Author : sinak
Score : 44 points
Date : 2026-01-17 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resonantcomputing.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (resonantcomputing.org)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| 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
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| Conceptually nice, but I don't know what this looks like in
| practice. An "examples" section is sorely needed.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| 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.
| patcon wrote:
| 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
| fabrice_d wrote:
| 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.
| Jazamat wrote:
| 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" :)
| qrian wrote:
| 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?
| daveguy wrote:
| 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.
| Twey wrote:
| 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 a 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)
| aappleby wrote:
| 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.
| jrm4 wrote:
| 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."
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