Things I Like
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For better or for worse, the last eight years have been defined less by the rise of small tech companies than by the expansion of Big Tech. We’ve seen the second Silicon Valley boom, with companies valued in the billions, including Facebook, Uber, Snapchat, Palantir and Dropbox. Established technology companies like Amazon, Apple and Google have expanded their reach and influence throughout the world. And while many countries have pushed back against that spread, our government has essentially left them alone. (In August, for instance, WhatsApp announced that it would begin sharing user data with Facebook, its parent company, and its suite of products — news that gave some Americans pause but caused German regulators to intervene on behalf on their citizens.)
This is a great piece looking at how the Obama administration has pushed for technology. And the author references a speech Obama gave a few days later where he admits that government has to do it all and it's messy, unlike Silicon Valley. But I enjoyed the perspective about how our government hasn't protected the citizens from bad practices as much as some other world governments have. Privacy and how our data is used/shared/leaked is one of the biggest issues as everything moves online.
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Apple’s own apps don’t even come close to providing the features most regular workplaces rely on, let alone addressing the needs of the multitude of specialised industries that are using Apple’s platforms.
I've seen a lot of anger about the updated Macs that were announced last week. Most of it is coming from my developer friends, for the very reason that Baldur talks about in his piece. In my house, we are talking about getting a Surface Tablet, we don't use devices a lot when not working, and the Surface would allow us to share it and each have an account. And I'm seeing a lot of colleagues considering switching to Microsoft.
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I don't normally do this, but I read two different pieces in the New York Times Sunday Review yesterday that were talking about two sides of the very same coin and I found it interesting. The first was on the cover and got the big splashy illustration, "Go Midwest, Young Hipster", about how we are self segregating ourselves based on political leanings. The second was much more subtle, in an inner page, just along the side of the page, a full page column and that was it, "Good Neighbors, No Politics", where the author talks about living her neighborhood for 21 years and politics don't divide them. As neighbors they support each other through their life crisis and it's OK if they don't agree politically, they're still in community and close friends.
The reason these two are so interesting to me is that they point to some assumptions we're making about people based solely on one thing: how they vote. But when you get to know people, when you are in community with them, when you support them through good and bad times, that may not be the most important thing. I'm starting to believe more and more that community is what will see us through the crazy polarization we are in, being in community with people who are different than you in many ways. We aren't moving, but I do think about this as I realize where we live and what that means for our community and echo chamber.
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When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.
It was hard to pick a quote for this one because I loved all 10 of the learnings. But I chose this one because I've been in a bit of a funk lately and this is what I needed to hear this weekend. It's hard, in an age of all the information flying at you all the time, to feel like you are enough, just as you are. But this piece, along with the piece I linked to about Ursula Le Guin, are helping set me to rights. I'm also staying away from the noise, which means less Twitter and more reading and posting here.
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But Trump’s success in the primary among the civically disintegrated suggests another way forward. Improving the United States’s immune response to authoritarian leadership—a response that could be repeatedly tested in the century to come—can follow from weaving its civic fabric ever tighter. I don’t know what this will look like, exactly, for every person. But here are some places to start: Volunteer. Run for local or state office. Give to charity (whether due to religion or effective altruism). Organize at work. Join a church or a community choir or the local library staff. Make your hometown a better place for refugees to settle. Raise a child well.
We talk a lot about climate change at my house, it's our main worry about the future. This piece is really great for how it looks at the climate crisis and how it may be compounded by unscrupulous leaders and it's people who will suffer. It feels very much like capitalism is in a thrash because it's goals and the goal of protecting the earth don't go together very well.
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We weren’t — we aren’t — designing systems where an audience passively consumes our content, but are inviting them in to talk and share and push back and expand. More platforms means more places to publish; it also means more places to reach that community, more places for those discussions to happen, more opportunities for amazing connections to be made. And, alas, many more vectors for abuse.
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Le Guin can be polemical, prone to what one close friend calls “tirades” on questions she feels strongly about. I once watched her participate in a panel discussion on gender and literature at WisCon, an annual gathering of feminist science-fiction writers, readers, and academics in Madison, Wisconsin. Scowling like a snapping turtle, she sat waiting for illogical remarks, which she then gently but firmly tore to bits. Yet a conversation with Le Guin is often full of comic asides, laughter, and—a particularly Le Guin trait—good-natured snorts. Humor seems to be her way of taking the edge off the polemic, as well as an introvert’s channel of communication. Behind even the lightest remarks, one is aware of a keen intelligence and a lifetime of thought, held back for the purposes of casual conversation.
This piece, I don't know how to talk about it. It may be a season I'm going through right now, but reading about Le Guin's life, reading about her seasons of loneliness and pushing through, continuing to write, something about it resonated deeply. As I wade through my current season, feeling a bit lost in life, wondering where I should be heading, what I should be working on (work not necessarily meaning for pay), I'm going to hang on to the story of Le Guin. I'll be coming back to this piece again and again over the coming weeks as I try and figure out what I want to do, where I want to go, and who I want along for support and laughter.
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The modern journalist is not an expert on the web. They and their colleagues have spent a large part of the last twenty-five years dismissing the open web at every stage. They are not the people you can trust to either accurately assess the web or to make usable websites. You can’t even trust them to make sensible decisions about web strategy. Just look at their damn websites!
So much good stuff in this piece. And it's so true. The open web is here, the open web is amazing, and I love the web. (I just discovered this site and it's fantastic, added to my feed list immediately.)
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There are literally billions of people out there that rely on the work we do collectively. It’s our obligation to make sure that what we build is usable, accessible, and actually works. We have to build responsibly, proactively, and with empathy.
I agree with this, but at the same time, these articles keep having to be written and I'm sad that so many don't want to make a web for everyone, but rather for a privileged few.
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The wonderful thing is that “me” is always changing. Every day you’re a different you. So when you say, “It wasn’t for me,” maybe it’s not for the “me” right now—maybe it’s for the “me” in the future.
There are two things I like about this short post. The first is that it gives me a way to respond to the stream of things that people are telling me I need to watch, especially movies, which I don't do very much anymore. Second, we do change all the time. I often start a book and it doesn't click and I don't want to finish, so I put it on the shelf and it may be years before I pick it up again.
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Personally, I find progressive enhancement a sensible way to counteract any assumptions I might inadvertently make. Progressive enhancement increases the chances that the web site (or web app) I’m building is resilient to the kind of scenarios that I never would’ve predicted or anticipated.
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Is a developer building a new component and needs some styles? The UX Engineer writes that CSS. The UX Engineer gives a snippet of HTML to the developer for them to incorporate into the component. The UX engineer ensures the correct semantics and can come alongside the developer to ensure keyboard navigation works. The UX Engineer maintains a pattern library for the team to use as a reference to find existing styles.
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I will realize, only then, that she didn’t escape from China—the oldest daughter of a proud family of academics, married off to the son of a merchant in America; who walked miles and miles from her village to Toisaan carrying my father, eventually managing to get herself to Hong Kong; who boarded a plane to London and, unsure which plane was bound for Boston, followed two students to another flight that took her to New York; who spent a terrifying month at Ellis Island with my father; who was somehow, in this age before Facebook and cell phones and databases, found by my grandfather and brought back to Boston; who worked seven brutal days a week washing and steam-pressing the clothes of white, working-class families in North Cambridge; who bought a home and raised three children in that laundry; who, with the help of local resident Tip O’Neill, would gradually bring almost her entire family to America; who, when the laundry was sold, worked in a belt factory; who, by the time I was a child, seemed to know so many people on the streets of Boston’s Chinatown that I thought she was its mayor—for me to forgo the beef.
This is lovely, read it.
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This talk by Paul Lloyd from SmashingConf Freiburg is so fantastic. I really love it when people take other industries and history and relate it back to the web in some way. Paul does this with city planning and then moves to talking about design systems. It's really worth the watch and I'll be returning to it.
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But what about web development? I have found a code of ethics for software engineers , and maybe this is something taught as part of a CS degree, but for most self-taught web developers, I imagine they have never spent time looking into this. There are a few different bodies that put together codes of ethics for software engineers, but the very first bullet point listed on that Wikipedia article is: “Contribute to society and human well-being”.
Kristin is blogging again and I'm so excited. And she, like others in our industry, is asking some really good questions about how we think (or don't) about the things we make.