Connected but Alone

Sei addresses the paradox of a hyperconnected society in which people experience extreme loneliness and isolation. The project responds by helping close friends and existing groups spend meaningful time together in the real world. Sei does not critique technology itself, but the dominant patterns of traditional social media: endless scrolling, public metrics, and algorithmic feeds. These can displace real-world interaction, fragment attention, reduce agency, and intensify comparison. The app is built around three actions: choosing friends, interests, and availability; planning real-world activities together; and preserving private memories of shared experiences. Its transparent, rule-based suggestion system uses relationship and location context to propose realistic plans. By reducing the friction between wanting to meet and actually meeting, SEI optimises for presence over performance and imagines technology as a bridge back to embodied relationships.