Things I Like
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These designers do this by engaging with the complex adaptive systems that surround us, by revealing instead of obscuring, by building friction instead of hiding it, and by making clear that every one of us (designers included) are nothing more than participants in systems that have no center to begin with. These are designers of systems that participate – with us and with one another – systems that invite participation instead of demanding interaction.
Everything about this piece is just so great. Lately I've been very interested in and motivated by the things outside of the tech world that are similar or that I can learn from, so I've been reading a lot about art. But architecture is a close second here because I think you can draw a lot of parallels.
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Choose names and classifications that make the most sense for the most people. It can be counter-productive if a team spends more time struggling with the analogy than designing and building the tool itself.
Trent, being all reasonable here, but he really is right.
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The technology/art dichotomy discourages people who might otherwise be interested in one or the other, or forces people who are interested in both to pick one or the other.
The illustrations are great in this piece, but I also really love the point. I spend a lot of time away from the computer doing art and it's nice to see the acknowledgement that the two can actually work in tandem and help you be better at both.
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It’s intimidating to throw yourself into solving problems that you’ve grown up with and around. Most American kids, unless they’ve been raised in a highly sheltered environment, have some sense of how multi-faceted problems like mass incarceration really are. Choosing to work on that issue (one that many countries in the Global South handle far better than we do, by the way) means choosing to nurture a deep, motivating horror at what this country is doing via a long and humble journey of learning. It means studying sentencing reform. The privatization of prisons. Cutting-edge approaches already underway, like restorative justice and rehabilitation. And then synthesizing, from all that studying, a sense of what direction a solution lies in and steadfastly moving toward it.
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The moment that tied it all together for me was when I asked a mother in my research study why it was important to train her children to behave properly in public. She simply replied, “Because if they know how to behave properly, they will know how to adapt and get along with people. And that will give them pleasure.” Adhering to social rules is a means to greater pleasure. You have to give up something to gain something greater.
This article is somewhat about parenting, but I think it's broader topic is how we live life in America versus how they do so in France. And it's taken me a long time to feel OK and good about taking time off, doing things I enjoy, and not living to work but rather working to live and do the things I enjoy.
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The expectations for a Facebook experience are shaped by the cultural expectations brought to the table. No farmer we spoke to had explicit or calcified expectations—they had not joined Facebook ten years ago or five years ago or even two years ago. They had not been indoctrinated into whatever it is Facebook thinks it is. Or what Facebook wants us to think it is. For them, it is a malleable tool. And they have made it into what they want: Largely a news reader. A relatively bandwidth efficient way to read about topics that interest them (the weather, Buddhism, pretty girls in swimsuits).
This is a really lovely look at how an application can vary in how it's used and what it means. And the key to the Facebook popularity is the low data usage. We often forget these things as we consume data in gargantuan amounts because it's cheap for us.
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There’s a tendency for human beings to interface with things that are pleasant to us. It’s taken 600 years, from Gutenberg to now, for the book to achieve the shape that seems to be optimal for our eyes and hands. Everything that is electronic will achieve the same standard. It will be a different substrate, but there is obviously something in it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for 500 years. The same goes for the screen. I knew it wasn’t going to stay as bad as that. In ’91, Adobe published ATM, Adobe Type Manager, when some of the bitmaps went smooth and there was anti-aliasing. I know it has taken 20 years, but now it’s as good if not better.
Learn as much about our culture as you possibly can, by reading, by traveling, by involving yourself in things that go on. But don’t become an artist. Don’t think, “I’ll do it intuitively.” You have to learn if not to code at least to appreciate code, to understand code. Because code is what nuts and bolts were a hundred years ago.
Had to do two quotes here, it's a great interview, especially his life story at the beginning.
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That anger explains a lot, but the question still remains: how do folks continue to ignore facts? How have people’s viewpoints become so insular and isolated that any contradictory information never even penetrates the bubble? How did we get to a point where dialogue is impossible? And I’m not just referring to this presidential race, but to many other areas of discussion as well. Am I imagining this or has the echo chamber, where one only hears what one agrees with, expanded in scope and at the same time had the effect of increasing that anger and the inability to have a dialogue?
This entire thing is awesome. I had no idea David Byrne had a newsletter, but I'm glad I know now and I'm subscribed.
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Unlike the web of today, where more or less everything exists at a particular address and, if that server goes offline, the content is lost, connected copies ensure that even if one person or company ceases to pay their hosting bills, many other copies persist. Caulfield compares it to a run of books: one library can burn, but odds are every book in its stacks exists elsewhere, so the loss to collective human knowledge is minimal. I couldn’t help but think of this in context of the rising era of platforms on the web and the increasingly dire consequences if (when) some of these systems eventually shut down. It’s very likely that our next Octavia Butler is today writing on WattPad or Tumblr or Facebook. When those servers cease to respond, what will we lose? More than the past is at stake—all our imagined futures are at risk, too.
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But accessibility should be a baseline, not the sum of it all. And I want more from a feed than basic accessibility. I want to fucking learn something. I want to challenge my perception of the world. And, yeah, I want to see pandas rolling in the snow, too, but a panda-only web would be pretty dull. At some point, a feed that you never leave is going to feel like a prison. Platform designers should take heed.
Well, as usual, Mandy has written another great letter. And what I love about this letter so much is that final conclusion. I'm not on very many of the usual networks, and I have people in my life that get upset with me about it, but there are reasons for that, very good ones, and one of them is that I want to discover way more than just what those networks decide I should discover. I want the web, the open web, filled with links.
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I worry that the push to keep the web defined to words, while pragmatic and reasonable in many ways, may also be used to decide what stories get told, and what stories are heard. Many more people are using their tiny computers to record video and audio and take pictures than are writing; as much as I may love writing, and as much as I know that transmitting writing via cables and air is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than transmitting video, I’m not sure I can really stand here and say that the writing is—or should be—primary.
One of the design principles of the web is to pave the cowpaths: it looks to me like there are some new paths opening up, ones we may not have expected, ones that aren’t going to make many of our jobs easier. Maybe instead of putting up signs saying there are better paths elsewhere, it’s time we see where these ones take us.
I really love Mandy's writing, which if you read this site regularly you know. For this one, it was so hard to keep the quote short, so it isn't. I'm quite similar to Mandy, I'm a word person and it's what I love about the web. But, like Mandy, I realize that images and other pieces of the web are important, which we need to recognize.
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We don’t always have the luxury of putting time away. Yet if we observe it as an asset — save-able, invest-able, and appreciable — in time, we get to appreciate it back.
I love these ideas about time. And as usual, because it's as story involving a bank, I'm right with Liz, back to my childhood as my dad worked in a bank and I spent time in and around it.
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Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today. To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I’ve been curious for a long time what the real story is. And in preparation for her bicentennial, I decided to try to solve what for me has always been the “mystery of Ada”.
I know very little about the story of Ada Lovelace, so I found this account really fascinating. I saw a machine of Charles Babbage in the Computer History Machine in California in September, so it was interesting to read of her relationship with him.
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The role assignments can vary hugely from project to project, which is great. People are varied and multi-faceted. Trying to force the same people into the same roles over and over again would be demoralising and counter-productive. I fear that’s exactly what job titles do—they reinforce barriers.
I really love Jeremy's thinking on this. A title is telling you what the person's speciality is. But on differing projects, actual responsibilities may change (hopefully they do, that's what keeps things interesting). So the title isn't enough to know what's what, but talking as a team is.
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The question of which path to take to full autonomy, a ground-up approach or a more gradual semi-autonomous one, is at the center of many debates about the technology. A more pressing question in the short-term is this: How much does a person’s perception of the computer’s job make a difference?
I find the self driving car fascinating, ever since I read Three Commutes. I definitely think it will have to come in waves, getting people comfortable with the technology (much like we had elevator operators because people were uncomfortable with elevators when they first started appearing). I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.