Lowsalt: Gen’en for the Internet
Lowsalt is a movement that reframes responses to digital addiction through the Japanese sensibility of Gen’en, or reducing salt. In Japanese food culture, salty ingredients such as miso, pickles, and soy sauce are deeply embedded in daily life. Gen’en is not the rejection of salt, but a practice of learning to live with it while reducing its excess.
Just as a high-salt diet places strain on the body, an internet that is too stimulating places strain on the nervous system through the eyes and ears. Referring to Japanese cultural practices such as sentō, or public bathhouses, this project reconsiders privacy not merely as something to be protected, but as an asset to be managed and used in order to regulate one’s own life. It proposes digital lowsalt as a way of lowering excess stimulation in order to live better.
Lowsalt Internet Movement
2019
A service in which a human third-party coach monitors the user’s usage history and helps correct the user’s digital lifestyle habits.
View Work →Middleman: a Filter Store for Countering Internet Addiction
2019
Middleman is a web service that repurposes the cracking technique known as a man-in-the-middle attack to intercept the user’s communications and erase selected information before it appears on the user’s screen. In exchange for providing the service provider with access to the important privacy of confidential communications, users gain the benefit of not being exposed to information that triggers addiction.
View Work →CoinLocker: Voluntary Social Media Account Takeover
2019
This project implements, as a web service, a protocol that creates the benefit of being unable to access social media by deliberately disclosing information that is normally kept private: the ID and password of one’s SNS account.
View Work →JAILER: a Self-Monitoring App for Overcoming Procrastination
2018
As a concrete practice of treating privacy as an asset, this project implements a protocol in the form of a web service in which users are monitored in their own rooms by anonymous third parties. While remaining in their private spaces, users are exposed to the gaze of others, enabling them to make their decisions more consciously.
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