"Today's web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising "One Weird Trick!" to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders."
"Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna. The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent?"
Today's web often produces hostile or distracting experiences: cookie popovers, Taboola ads, and social media optimized for engagement that amplifies conflict. Such tensions undermine sites' goals of providing support, trustworthy news, and welcoming spaces for events and newcomers. Amiable interaction helps disparate and disagreeable people collaborate productively and feel comfortable. A historical case from Vienna demonstrates the importance of amiability in a research community and the dangers when it collapses. Computing emerged in Depression-era Vienna around 1928–1934, focused on theoretical limits rather than machine-building. Researchers aimed to test whether mathematics and reasoning could be made self-contained, consistent, and expressible in language.
Read at A List Apart
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