Things I Like
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I don’t pretend that these are easy questions to answer. But if we need technology that’s not simply fast or pretty, but just, it’s worth putting AMP under a critical lens. (As well as, yes, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News, and, and, and.) If we fail to do that, we can’t be sure how well it measures up to our needs, much less the needs of the web as an open medium. And we definitely won’t know how well it serves entities other than Google.
Ethan, making a lot of sense about how we should think about AMP and all the things we make. It's time for the tech industry to take responsibility for how they are changing the internet and web in profound ways.
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While nothing is stopping people from finding out more information before responding, the clearest affordance Twitter has is for these “drive-by” responses (I’ve been mansplained to by many people who I presume haven’t even looked at my bio to see the “engineering professor” there before trying to school me on my research field—per Telemachus, “of me most of all”). This amplification and context collapse, coupled with the ease of replying and of creating bots, makes targeted harassment trivially easy, particularly in an environment where users can both mostly live in their own ideological bubble by following people who share their views, however abhorrent, and who can easily forget that there is a real person behind the 140 characters of text.
Another great piece from Debbie Chachra, one of my favorite thinkers and writers lately. How we build products matter and we aren't thinking about that nearly enough these days.
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“One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before,” Rosenstein says. It may or may not be relevant that Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls.
I found this article fascinating and relatable in many ways. I'm a bit older than most of the people profiled, but I too am backing way away from tech. And when I talk about it with work colleagues most are surprised. But the above quote struck me, as less and less people remember living in a less connected world what will the affect be on our society, on individuals, etc?
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When the Coen brothers were asked about their creative process, Joel Coen said, “We do a lot of napping.”
A good reminder, taking breaks can activate our process, and make us more efficient at our work.
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Twitter is supposed to be all about what’s happening right now, and its model gives users good reason to think of their tweets as ephemeral and disposable. I won’t say I’m entirely immune to that sentiment, but regular readers of this site will be unsurprised to learn that I’m more interested in Twitter as an archive, as a collection of bite-sized dispatches from events in our lives that run the gamut from mundane to sublime, which can be recombined in various ways to tell a uniquely affecting story…
This is lovely.
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Another major goal was to ensure that low-vision, screenreader and keyboard-only users could navigate the site with ease. While starting from a clean codebase, we were able to make many impactful improvements to color contrast, semantic HTML and keyboard accessibility with little additional effort. Additionally, we were able to work in some new features for a more accessible experience.
Good on Slack for realizing that a rebuild was in order to make their marketing site better for everyone to use. I also find it interesting, they developed a framework and use that terminology. Right now there are so many different people using different words for what they build and it's fascinating (what's a framework vs a style guide vs a pattern library vs a design system?).
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In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but I would appreciate some respect for my deliberate choice. It gets pretty wearying over the long haul. To use a completely inappropriate analogy, it’s like a recovering alcoholic constantly having to rebuff “friends” asking if they’re absolutely sure they don’t want a drink.
I'm with Jeremy, I have no notifications on for any of my devices, and I hate being asked to allow them to be on. The way in which I constantly have to guard against apps and sites trying to steal my attention gets tiring.
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Of course, some politicians could swallow their future personal defeat in the name of a greater law — that’s what dozens of Democrats did in order to get Obamacare through the House, knowing full well how their vote would be framed when they faced reelection. But that supposition returns us to the fundamental difference at the heart of the two positions and, by extension, two Americas: One believes in the ability of the government to create safety, even if it entails sacrifices, small and large, on the part of the individual. The other believes those sacrifices, and the incremental increases in safety they cannot even guarantee to provide, are simply not worth the compromise of their liberty.
This is the best article I've read talking about the issue of guns in the US. As someone who lives in a state that is deeply split between the urban areas and the eastern part of the state that is much more related to the mountain west, I love reading Anne Helen Peterson, because her writing is capturing the way the Mountain West of the US sees things, which is so different from much of the rest of the US. Related: we have to find ways to talk to each other to solve these problems.
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I'm always way behind on the videos I save to watch, much harder to find some good solid time to watch them, but this talk by Paul Lloyd from this year's Patterns Day is worth your time if you are interested in systems of design, thinking about not just the components, but also what the components do as a group. I also like the bit about consistency, coherence, complexity, and conformance. Paul's onto many things in this talk. And, of course, Paul talks a lot about how our design systems influence our process, who does it serve, and how is it being used? Is it encouraging you to think about ethics, about how we design and how does it affect those that use it?
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As he saw it, government existed to provide basic services like trash pickup, a sewer system, roadways, police and fire protection, schools, and health care. Do people have a right to trash pickup? It seemed odd to say so, and largely irrelevant. The key point was that these necessities can be provided only through collective effort and shared costs. When people get very different deals on these things, the pact breaks down. And that’s what has happened with American health care.
This is a really great read about where many different people are coming from on how we should handle health care in this country. Gawande's style of investigating and writing about this issue is so refreshing as well. He listens without judgement and then tries to piece together how to bridge the divide and find a workable solution. It's well worth your time to read it if you've been following the legislative battle over health care this past year.
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One of our company values is “power of proof”, and while it is fairly easy to measure the number of visitors to our site who use outdated browsers which enables us to make informed decisions on their support, it is virtually impossible to measure visitors who are using tools such as screen readers or who want to use the keyboard as a main method of navigation.
This a great read on the challenges of adding accessibility after the fact and the two steps forward, one step back that may happen as you do. I applaud the team at trivago for working towards being more accessible.
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When every new website on the internet has perfect, semantic, accessible HTML and exceptionally executed, accessible CSS that works on every device and browser, then you can tell me that these languages are not valuable on their own. Until then we need to stop devaluing CSS and HTML.
I talk about this a lot, mostly because I don't write JavaScript and I don't really enjoy it but I love CSS and HTML. It saddens me that so little emphasis is put on them and that they are thought of as "easy" and not of value. And the above quote sums up well why we aren't, as an industry, putting out the best products we can. It's because we undervalue certain people's skills, passions, and work.
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Among the findings: Your dog may really love you for you — not for your food.
I love dogs and found this research really interesting, plus the photos are great.
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It’s hard not to marvel at these companies and their inventions, which often make life infinitely easier. But we’ve spent too long marveling. The time has arrived to consider the consequences of these monopolies, to reassert our role in determining the human path. Once we cross certain thresholds — once we remake institutions such as media and publishing, once we abandon privacy — there’s no turning back, no restoring our lost individuality.
This is a strong warning about how we use tech and what that tech is doing to us. I'm starting to get more and more suspicious of new tech and thinking long and hard before I start using most things. But the fact that tech is starting to take away our time for contemplation is increasingly of concern for me, along with our privacy, and how these companies are handling it.
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We can’t afford to see books as art if we want to make a contribution, whatever size that might be, to the world of bookmaking. Rather, we must see books as work instead.
This is a good reminder that elevating things to statuses that they may not deserve can make our lives harder. I find this with the work of artists that I enjoy as well, while that is technically a work of art, it is not meant to make me feel that my work doesn't matter even if it never makes it into a museum, just as my writing is mine and good enough even if it's never published.