Things I Like
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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.
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The hero in your life is never going to be the person who pats you on the head: it’s going to be the person who puts their own need to be liked aside to make you a better designer. And no, someone doesn’t need to understand you or your project 100% before they have the right to say anything about it. The person who doesn’t get you or what you made is the one that is most likely to come up with the idea or the insight that you can’t come up with on your own. People who see things differently are gold.
I studied fine arts in college and much of what is said here in relation to design work would apply to art as well. The best teachers I had in school were the ones who would push me, make me think, and make me listen. She goes on to talk about how you need to handle and respond in critique. And it's the exact opposite of what most people want to do, it's to ask more questions and be open to the answers.
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We are alive at a time when huge systems—industrial, infrastructural—are being remade, and I think it’s our responsibility as we make choices both commercial and civic—it’s just a light responsibility, don’t stress—to extrapolate forward, and ask ourselves: Is this a system I want to live inside? Is this a system fit for humans?
I really love the way that Robin Sloan juxtaposes these two different ways to get food when you are hungry. One is slick, but what is the true harm of it, what is the society we are building if we choose it? The other fosters community, neighborhood, people knowing people and I love that idea.
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Saving something on the web, just as Kevin Vaughan learned from what happened to his work, means not just preserving websites but maintaining the environments in which they first appeared—the same environments that often fail, even when they’re being actively maintained. Rose, looking ahead hundreds of generations from now, suspects “next to nothing” will survive in a useful way. “If we have continuity in our technological civilization, I suspect a lot of the bare data will remain findable and searchable,” he said. “But I suspect almost nothing of the format in which it was delivered will be recognizable.”
Such a good article about all the things we lose on a regular basis as we shut down servers and web sites. So much of our history is now digital, and many don't seem to care when it disappears. It's rather sad.
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While “Airbnb’ing a room” has become the norm for many travelers, the company denies it has anything to do with lodging. Rather, it’s “a trusted community marketplace” and “an online platform that connects hosts who have accommodations to rent with guests seeking to rent such accommodations.” Of course, platforms are not neutral pieces of technology: they are embedded with the values of the marketplace, strategically designed for maximum profit and minimal liability. Companies that take advantage of such ambiguity pose risks to consumers, particularly when they’re trafficking in human experience, not just data or speech like Napster, Tumblr, and others before them who have appealed to their platform status to weather challenges to the legally murky activities they host.
Many who know me know that I don't really like AirBnB. Our one and only time renting for a vacation was disastrous and we lived next door to a house that was rented for a whole summer and it sucked. So we avoid them. And while I know there is risk in licensed establishments as well, I like to think that there is less risk. I may be kidding myself, but it's my preference. This article points out the many reasons why I don't trust AirBnB.
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I think Stewart is identifying a new facet of this. It’s not quite context collapse, because what’s collapsing aren’t audiences so much as expectations. Rather, it’s a collapse of speech-based expectations and print-based interpretations. It’s a consequence of the oral-literate hybrid that flourishes online. It’s conversation smoosh.
I've long felt that something is different with the way people are online, in particular how they are when they use Twitter. But this article goes a lot further in looking at language and how we use it and think about it. Fascinating.
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I think of this as the Jetsons fallacy, where you imagine you can transform the world with technology without changing anything about people's behavior. Of course the world reacts and changes shape in ways no one person can anticipate.
Maciej does it again. I would love to see him speak in person.
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Ironically, by being in touch with and acting from your true intentions, you become more effective in reaching your goals than when you act from wants and insecurities. Once the yogi understood this, she started to work with goals and intentions as separate functions. She later reported that continually coming back to her intentions in the course of her day was actually helping her with her goals.
This piece was linked in the Pastry Box piece I just linked to the other day. It is wonderful, really wonderful. I'm trying more and more to live my life with intentions rather than setting extreme goals and beating myself up if I don't meet them by a certain time period.
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Instead of worrying about working weekends and holidays the way I had in the United States, I planned trips like the rest of my colleagues: Paris. Prague. Zermatt. For the first time in my working life, I was living, too. Because of this, my creativity flourished. I had both time and money, and because I had real time off, I was more productive when I was at work. In my spare time I wrote blogs and essays and I swam in the lake.
This piece resonates with me so much. Not only the thoughts on working your day and then leaving work behind in the evenings and weekends so you can recharge and refresh, but also the ideas about part time work. I find it so intriguing that in Europe part time works and many companies do it. I brought up the idea of part time work when on a work retreat a few weeks ago and I was surprised at how impossible it seemed to make happen. But, in thinking about it, I already work with colleagues half a world away and so it is almost like part time, since we aren't working the entire day overlapping. I think it can work, and I wish I could find a company that would be willing to try it with me.
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This is a parody of the AMP Project and it's quite funny. We now have a framework, that is reworking HTML and using it's own language to make things fast. Why in the world we need this is beyond me and beyond Maciej and I love it. It is possible to make a fast web page out of the tools we now have, but most developers either don't do it or aren't allowed to do it due to demands of their bosses.
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What if, instead of setting a goal, I set an intention: “I will run without hyper-extending my knees”? It doesn’t look very different from a goal. Here’s the crux, though: the moment I realize I have abandoned my intention, I can pick it back up again and continue moving forward. I realized at some point that I wasn’t bending my knees enough on a downhill stretch. I changed my behavior, and I kept going.
I love this idea and have been doing the same thing for quite some time. My to-do list is mostly made up of intentions and I don't get super upset if I don't get everything done.