Against Eternity

Undurable is a lab dedicated to exploring the Buddhist concept of impermanence as applied to technology.

Our relationship with machines is distorted by an eternity bias: the illusion that data, memory and computing power are eternal and infinite. We produce information without measure and without choice. We save everything, reread little, forget nothing, but a mind that cannot forget stops distinguishing, connecting and, in the end, thinking.

What we believe to be eternal and limitless is not cared for, and the lack of care breeds decay and sameness. As a consequence, information, ideas and digital content are losing their value, precisely because we think they can be generated, copied and multiplied without end.

Undurable starts from the premise that awareness of the end breeds care. We choose what to keep because we cannot keep everything. In this choice, and in limits, in error, in forgetting, lies the human side of technology, and perhaps what can make it better.

That is why Undurable projects use simulated worlds and experimental software to impose limits of space and time on digital environments, observing the consequences and designing strategies to make the human mind the main device for preserving and passing on content. We build applications that do without a database or keep persistent memory to a minimum: through de-databasing, data fading and controlled forgetting, we want to give the mind back its ability to learn, understand, remember and spread knowledge.