For many of us, 2021 looked and felt like the B-Side of 2020. We were still home, attending work, school, and church virtually. Brodie Theis reflects on this reality in his short yet poignant poem.
Remote
By Brodie Theis
Remote school
and work.
Remote meetings
and friends.
All that is gained,
and lost.
Our coworkers
our family
our customers
our lives
are over there.
Behemoth technology firms with unfathomable financial resources are creating a different kind of community, relatedness, and interconnection. It’s one that allows us to hide from those we oppose, display an edited version of ourselves, and expect others (somewhere else) to do the dirty work of making and growing things.
The Metaverse Is Bad
By Ian Bogost
In science fiction, the end of the world is a tidy affair. Climate collapse or an alien invasion drives humanity to flee on cosmic arks, or live inside a simulation. Real-life apocalypse is more ambiguous. It happens slowly, and there’s no way of knowing when the Earth is really doomed. To depart our world, under these conditions, is the same as giving up on it.
College Professor and consultant Brodie Theis reflects on the digitizing of our human and societal connections. While our lives transpire more and more in the Metaverse, what happens to our relationship with the tangible, carbon-based, here and now?
Quarantine for Decades
by Brodie Theis
There is no shortage of pieces highlighting ways in which the pandemic has exposed our human interdependence. Supply chains halting holiday gifts. Infographics showing the path of the virus. Cheering for frontline workers at 5pm. An increased loneliness and depression due to isolation. It’s difficult to deny our unavoidable physical human interdependence.
At the same time, we’re being led into an increased virtual connectedness driven by tech firms, private equity, angel investors, and the Dow Jones. A server goes down in rural Oklahoma and we not only loose our ability to browse Netflix, we lose banking, music, texting with friends, FaceTime with mom, the home security system, and dinner delivery.
Studies reveal that housing instability and heavy rent burdens lead to a long list of devastating health problems, psychological and physical. Healthcare systems have found that when they invest in housing, they end up needing to use less resources on medical care.
The Severe Health Consequences of Housing Instability
By Frances Gill
The relationship between housing and health is intuitive and multifaceted. Causal pathways linking housing and individual health include everything from environmental health concerns (lead poisoning in old homes, for an example) to neighborhood characteristics (walkability, safety, access to affordable supermarkets) to the psychosocial stress of financial instability.
Communities are building shelters and supportive housing designed to help residents heal from all kinds of trauma. How can we design spaces for recovery that promote feelings of well-being, safety, and connection to the environment? This story profiles several shining examples.
What Is Trauma-Informed Design?
By Carl Winfield
For many of us, the global lockdowns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have made our homes places of respite, healing, and renewal. But for many others, including the unhoused, “home” is not always healing and can in fact be just the opposite.
Shari Stratton knows that all too well. For her, “home” meant a constant threat of domestic violence. When she eventually left, she had nowhere to turn until she found Arroyo Village, a supportive housing complex designed for those with traumatic histories. In a written profile she said she had stayed with friends and had applied for a shelter but instead was provided an apartment in Arroyo Village. She had worried that apartment living would be loud, a trigger for her PTSD, but that hasn’t been a problem for her.
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