by Nathan Heleine
If you were alive in May of 1905, you might have stumbled across an obscure romantic anecdote in the midst of your morning reading. A tiny New York Times article, all of sixty-three words, announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known love letter. Written by a Babylonian man named Gimil circa 2200 BC, part of the charm was his chosen format. The letter was carved into the face of a brick.
He writes to his lover Kasbuya:
“May the sun of Marduls grant thee eternal life. I would fain know if thy health is good.”
From that moment until now, the world has seen a 4,200 year evolution in communication technology. And if you were to unfold that timeline and lay it out across a large desk or dining room table, the relative age of online communication could be represented by the width of a single human hair.
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by Nathan Heleine
Duet is a little application that fits in your pocket, designed to foster and inspire meaningful one-to-one experiences in the real world – a collaborative life to-do list, digital datebook and private messaging instrument, blended with our top-secret original formula for nostalgia and synchronicity. Duet is made for you and the people you love.
Why We’re Making It
Our daily interactions have become incredibly fleeting and fragmented, as we now juggle more connections and digest more information than at any other point in human history. In the process we’re also living much more public lives. Our current digital platforms, on the whole, facilitate a remarkable volume of interpersonal communication with gusto, but they also represent an imbalance. They emphasize brevity over depth, scale over relevance, and utility over sincerity, to a degree that threatens the quality of our most precious relationships and experiences.
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by Nathan Heleine
Why do we make things?
An extremely broad question. Allow me to whittle it down a bit. By ‘we’ I mean those of us tinkering at the intersection of design, technology, and human experience. And the made things I’m referring to can consist of digital constructs in any context capable of influencing our behavior and relationships.
Why does this particular ‘we’ make these particular things?
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by Nathan Heleine
They make the shirts in factories. We still need the tailors.
They put the fire into light bulbs. We still need someone who knows how to start the fire.
They produce the food for billions. We still need the slow-cooked meal.
They print the pages by the thousands. We still need the letter, written by hand with love.
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by Nathan Heleine
Part 1: The art of getting lost is almost lost.
I get lost all the time. On my better days, I get lost intentionally. Lost can be much more than a step in the wrong direction or an act of aimless wandering. Lost is not necessarily dumb, blind, confused or misguided. Lost is not a ship without a rudder. Surely, to be lost should not imply that one is forgotten, and it should never be mistaken for mere absence.
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