Things I Like
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We can choose to remain small. We can choose to devote ourselves to something, and to those we serve. We can choose to do our small things in small ways and which, over a period of time, can build upon themselves.
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And that's what the browsers on devices like phones, game consoles and smart watches are like. We'll sometimes use whatever's closest to hand. It might not be the best tool for the job, but if it can still do a good enough job, so what?
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In my research, I found humility in a surprising place: the headquarters of I.B.M.’s Watson team, the people who built the computer that trounced the “Jeopardy!” champions. I asked the lead engineer of Watson’s health team, Eric Brown, what the equivalent of the “Jeopardy!” victory would be in medicine. I expected him to describe some kind of holographic physician, like the doctor on “Star Trek Voyager,” with Watson serving as the cognitive engine. His answer, however, reflected his deep respect for the unique challenges of health care. “It’ll be when we have a technology that physicians suddenly can’t live without,” he said.
I wish more start ups would devote their energy to the health care tech field. It desperately needs smart people (just like government tech does) and it is hard, but wow, the wins could mean saved lives and that would be pretty cool.
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They could have been any of us, anywhere—whoever flies or rides a train or takes a bus or in any way entrusts her life to strangers, as we all must regularly and routinely to get through this world. That sense of investment in calamity—it could have been me—is true, of course, of accidents and targeted acts of terrorism as well. But to be told that a scene of mass death is the result of an accident or terrorism is to be given not only an explanation of the cause but also an idea of how to reckon with the consequence–through justice, or revenge, or measures meant to prevent a recurrence.
I've got to admit, this plane crash this week, and the seemingly deliberate act that caused it have me confounded. And I honestly can't stop thinking of the last moments for the poor people on board. Horrifying.
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As writers, we don’t need companies like Medium to tell us how to use the web. Or define openness and democracy. Or tell us what’s a “waste of [our] time” and what’s not. Or determine how and where readers experience our work. We need to decide those things for ourselves.
This piece resonated with me on so many levels. I'm trying very hard to keep my thoughts, ideas, jottings right here on this site, where they are under my control and no one can take them away from me, especially since I have the source so even if my rented server space goes away, I still have this. But it also reminded me of the approach Editorially took to helping writers get their writing where they wanted it to be. It was a tool to help you write, but not to tell you what to do with those words.
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A really great interface trick to use for accessibility with tabbing. Love the idea, would love to see the code behind it.
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In the very beginning, I used Jim Collins' book Built to Last to figure out my core values. And then I gave those core values to everyone I worked with: Atlantic Records, CoverGirl, etc., and as I embarked on new creative projects or business partnerships, I weighed my core values and the proposed opportunity and I decided accordingly. Style is important, having fun and being whimsical and free is important, but I've always believed I can accomplish anything I want while also inspiring young girls and pushing for change around the world.
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And, most interesting to me, edgelessness means blurred lines between the disciplines that work together to make things for the web. Everyone that I’ve spoken with that’s worked on a large responsive project with a big client says that the process disrupts workflows, expectations, and work culture.
I had a really hard time picking just one quote from this piece, so read it, read it now! This is yet another example of why I love the web and why I love so much writing on the web, it is bringing together so many disparate ideas and people are using them to explain and understand concepts in a new way, much like Mandy Brown's Ferengi piece which I linked to earlier this week.
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I wonder how much effort we should be putting into influencing the evolution of those emergent social constructs, whether through our work or our personal interactions, and how much of that effort would be ultimately fruitless.
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Methodology is sticky in this way. We come up with our own techniques and plans and hold other people accountable to them, despite knowing that methodologies are, at heart, deeply personal. No one works like you do. No one works like I do.
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In the rush of a persistent accelerated now, interruptions and challenges to life in real-time are sometimes necessary in order to ask what kind of future we're building.
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I'm excited about the new possibilities of leaving complex math behind when doing a grid. I love that Rachel took an existing grid and made it with the new Grid layout. In addition, I'll be at AEA Boston and can't wait to hear her speak on this.
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What if we worried less about fixing the content, and instead accepted some chaos along the way? What if we looked at our work designing and building websites as opportunities to help others—to create ownership, commitment, and progress for the long term, rather than perfect webpages?
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All of which is a long-winded way of saying that our core discomfort with Medium—with most of online publishing—is we can’t quite see how the money works no matter how hard we squint. And we’re naturally suspicious of the ways that money skews our relationships, with each other and with art. (And art, lowercase-a, is what a lot of writing is, no matter what the investors tell you. It’s what we love in the writing we fall in love with.)
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What is web writing in 2015? Is it still based on the author model? If you enjoy watching a writer’s mind work over time (or you enjoy having that freedom as a writer), is there still a way to do that? Or is the writer’s-voice-driven Internet over, forever, everything’s atomistic now and it’s no longer possible to scrape an audience together that way even if you want to?
So many good things in this one that I had a hard time picking a quote. But the questions, about what is web writing, about platforms, about social networks, all very worth thinking about.