Things I Like
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To work with new people, to connect to new audiences. To broaden the scale and breadth of your voice. To stand upon the soapboxes that publications offer. To collect dissenting opinions. To see what couldn’t be seen without the help of an editor or gang of skeptics willing to look over your shoulder, pointing you in directions you considered but were too meek to explore. Mainly, to write better and with greater empathy.
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And I think it’s this, the import and ethics of networked lenses, that we’re wrestling with in story after story. Networked images are simply different than the products of film cameras. They’re easier to edit and slipperier to steal. Networked pictures get away from you, via black hat Torrenting, social media drag-and-dropping, or illicit iCloud downloading.
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Just try to remember, no one expects you, as a person, to remain 'static' — to always do the same thing, day in, day out — that can lead to stagnation, not just for ideas but for you as a person.
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There’s something about the power of the human voice—divorced from the moving image—that still gets to me. It’s like slow glass for the soul.
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But hypertext brings with it something else, too: that speed and fidelity give rise to a transparency of iteration and revision previously unavailable. Not only can I rapidly evolve a text, but I can also expose that evolution and let others participate within it. I can open up the collaboration wider than I could before.
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We do not control the environment executing our JavaScript code, interpreting our HTML, or applying our CSS. Our users control the device (and, thereby, it’s processor speed, RAM, etc.). Our users choose the operating system. Our users pick the browser and which version they use. Our users can decide which add-ons they put in the browser. Our users can shrink or enlarge the fonts used to display our Web pages and apps. And the Internet providers that sit between us and our users, dictating the network speed, latency, and ultimately controlling how—and what part of—our content makes it to our users.
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The first is feeling like I’m sitting at a sidewalk cafe, speaking in a conversational voice, but having that voice projected so loudly that strangers many streets away are invited to comment on my most inconsequential statements—especially if something I say gets retweeted beyond my usual circles.
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At the end of each day, I write an “atomic sentence,” a single statement that summarizes the most vital lesson about that day.
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Because the entire website was built mobile first, we quickly realized that adding or changing components on the page would entail going through the mobile-first approach for every single (minor and major) design decision. We’d design a new component in a mobile view first, and then design an “extended” view for the situations when more space is available. Often that meant adjusting media queries with every single change, and more often it meant adding new stuff to style sheets and to the markup to address new issues that came up.
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Chris became surprisingly introspective. "I did examine myself," he said. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here's the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free."
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In other words, by thinking about the needs of the small screen first, you can layer on more complexity from there. And if you’re hearing shades of mobile first and progressive enhancement here, you’d be right: they’re treating their markup—their content—as a foundation, and gently layering styles atop it to make it accessible to more devices, more places than ever before.
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He found ways of making yoga more accessible to non-bendy newcomers, developing methods for using props like belts, straps, and blocks—or, in the early days, bricks and pieces of wood—to get people into positions. Even in the hippy-filled 1970s, he was making the practice more mainstream.
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I think for many of us Twitter started as the porch—our space, our friends, with the occassional neighborhood passer-by. As the service grew and we gained follwers, we slid across the spectrum of privacy into the street.
Side note from me: I do a lot to make twitter remain a bit more porchlike for me. Muting words, people, and hashtags like mad, following a smaller number of people, and not feeling compelled to check it all the time.
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This is not a world where you can simply express love for other people, where you can praise them. Perhaps it should be. But it’s not. I’ve found that people will fear your enthusiasm and warmth, and wait to hear the price. Which is fair. We’ve all been drawn into someone’s love only to find out that we couldn’t afford it. A little distance buys everyone time.
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Will they give me one hour of housecleaning in exchange for the poetry reading? Or wash the car just one time a month, for the turtles? No? I understand. But at 80, will they be proud that they spent their lives keeping their houses cleaner than anyone else in the family did, except for mad Aunt Beth, who had the vapors? Or that they kept their car polished to a high sheen that made the neighbors quiver with jealousy? Or worked their fingers to the bone providing a high quality of life, but maybe accidentally forgot to be deeply and truly present for their kids, and now their grandchildren?