Things I Like
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It’s interesting to note that many of these apps are corporeal. Contrary to intuition, the way to better technology is through the body, because we do not leave our body behind when we log on. We may be striving to create a nourishing digital condition for ourselves, but it will always be informed by what’s happening on the ground. The place of technology in our lives begins and ends with the place where we find ourselves.
Frank's been doing some amazing thinking about technology and how we use it and this piece is really great. I love libraries, so I was hooked from the start, but I also find the research on what apps make people happy versus those that don't telling. We have control over how we use these things, even if the apps don't want us to think so.
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Let’s be more like that tortoise: diligent, direct, and purposeful. The web needs pockets of slowness and thoughtfulness as its reach and power continues to increase. What we depend upon must be properly built and intelligently formed. We need to create space for complexity’s important sibling: nuance. Spaces without nuance tend to gravitate towards stupidity. And as an American, I can tell you, there are no limits to the amount of damage that can be inflicted by that dangerous cocktail of fast-moving-stupid.
This piece resonated with me a lot, it's something I've been thinking about as well and I've even written about it. I'm not nostalgic for the way the web used to be, but I am, increasingly, concerned about the people we leave out with the complexity we've created. There are a lot of hard things on the web right now, this is a small piece that affects a lot of us every day in our work and, I think, makes our work less efficient and less accessible.
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There’s another theory floating around as to why Facebook cares so much about the way it’s impacting the world, and it’s one that I happen to agree with. When Zuckerberg looks into his big-data crystal ball, he can see a troublesome trend occurring. A few years ago, for example, there wasn’t a single person I knew who didn’t have Facebook on their smartphone. These days, it’s the opposite. This is largely anecdotal, but almost everyone I know has deleted at least one social app from their devices. And Facebook is almost always the first to go. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other sneaky privacy-piercing applications are being removed by people who simply feel icky about what these platforms are doing to them, and to society.
The backlash on social media platforms is beginning and at the same time those same platforms are getting more and more desperate to keep our eyes glued to them. I don't have a Facebook account, but I do use Instagram a bit, and I'm bombarded with it wanting me to do something to make it easier for the app to bug me every time I open it up. These things have the opposite effect on me as I'm now close to leaving the platform altogether.
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I love Le Guin's writing and this is a great compilation of a bunch of various quotes from her books, speeches, and more. Well worth a read through if you're unfamiliar with her work.
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Designers like to talk about how they finally have a seat at the table. It’s an attractive idea, especially since companies have started to build internal design teams rather than outsource to agencies. But sometimes it feels as if designers have been tricked into thinking they have a seat, when in fact they’ve been taken hostage, only to develop Stockholm syndrome.
Interesting thoughts from Paul about how we choose who we work for and what that means in the larger sense of ethics and the state of the internet.
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But I also worry about how shallow the tech community’s interpretation of craft is; how aesthetic and performative we’ve made it. We buy handmade holsters for our Sharpies. Our conferences offer wood-turning workshops. Our dress code somehow blends hipster fetishisation of a blue-collar past with the minimalism of the urban rich: we yearn to connect with a handmade, physical world (perhaps to compensate for the ephemerality of our materials), but above all we must display our appreciation of quality, and hence our taste. Craft underpins how we dress and even behave. It’s easy to see where this leads: these identity performances become acts of gatekeeping. Those who look the part and fit the groove are given attention, hired, and respected. The rest are filtered out. Craft as class warfare.
I love this piece and the way in which Bowles equates our talk of craft with class. Also the Chachra piece he links to is a fave that I return to again and again.
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I don’t just want to see the quality of your final mockup, your finished set of templates: I want to learn how you got there. I want to read what worked, what didn’t, and the decisions you made along the way.
So much this. I would also add that writing and communicating are vital skills, sometimes more vital than just being able to design well or code well. And writing about your work, your thoughts, and your ideas is one way to show more of what you'd be like to with on a team.
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So instead of being just another way to get posts from blogs that you were interested in, RSS fostered countless communities and friendships across oceans, across networks. And because of that I now think of RSS as a window into a room with the smartest, kindest people — and sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, they would open up the window and wave back.
I am at once happy to see this post and sad to see this post. I love the way in which Robin describes RSS and what it is, but I'm sad that so many people have forgotten or never known about it that he felt it necessary to write it in the first place. I'm seeing a resurgence of blogging (yay!) and many sites that are still in my feed reader are coming back to life. As I like to say: RSS 4 lyfe.
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This is a super good look at the ways in which nostalgia for World War II was used to then justify and promote the war on terror post 9/11. It led me to think about the late 90s and how it was the first time there wasn't a uniting "evil" that all Americans agreed is bad and should be fought (think the cold war and the Soviet Union). And the war on terror hasn't united us, if anything it's fractured us even more in many ways. And that led me to wonder what could unite people, what can be the common good that we all agree on? Note: I'm not saying that any past era was perfect, but I do wonder about the different underlying unifying themes of past eras.
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But what's good for Panipat and its customers is bad news for donors and the environment. Even if Panipat were producing shoddy at its peak, it probably couldn't manage the growing flood of used clothing entering the market in search of a second life. Between 2000 and 2015, global clothing production doubled, while the average number of times that a garment was worn before disposal declined by 36 percent. In China, it declined by 70 percent.
We've been going back to using up and wearing out things, climate change is a huge motivator. In the past six month I've had a pair of shorts and a pair of jeans both rip beyond repair because I'm wearing out the things I have. But reading this article brought home that I want to keep doing that. The amount of trash we're creating because we "tire" of things is startling.
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In fact, it takes a lot of time to design robust systems that can scale across every part of a UI/product and doing all that work weirdly enough doesn’t feel like work, instead it’s more akin to unnecessary hassle and stress. But I can’t help think that this is what should differentiate the work of product designers from the work of graphic or print designers—and orgs should really incentivize simple and perhaps even boring additions to a system or a product.
I find this idea really intriguing, the different incentives for developers versus designers and how that's reflected in their work.
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Messing around with a stand mixer or a sewing machine is fun for me because it’s not work. Personal pleasure is what makes a hobby a hobby.
I really love this piece because it perfectly captures the answer I've given to many who've told me I should sell the things I do for relaxation.
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Since I wrote that over half a decade ago, things have just gotten worse in America, and as steady jobs keep disappearing and the market continues to gobble up the culture, the “free time” activities which used to soothe us and take our minds off work and add meaning to our lives are now presented to us as potential income streams.
A follow-up to the The Cut piece I posted, but Kleon clearly understands that many side projects become hustle due to economic circumstances, but that does change it from what it was intended to be, a hobby lives in the realm of pleasure and not work.
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With my newfound free time, I’m looking forward to reading some books, playing some games, and listening to some podcasts. But this is an endless conquest, there will be more things to click tomorrow. So I’ll stand waist-deep and punch fiercely at the waves crashing on the shore.
I'm with Dave, I've been putting things away after work and focusing on hobbies, books, and the TV shows I enjoy rather than the latest post and outrage online.
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It’s not the frameworks that are a problem but the architectural model of the applications we use them to make. Maybe frameworks will come up with some revolutionary solution that solves or makes up for the downsides.
This is a super varied post, but full of really interesting ideas and thoughts. I don't agree with all of them, but I'm thinking on several and that's what good writing should do.