Things I Like
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There’s a tendency for human beings to interface with things that are pleasant to us. It’s taken 600 years, from Gutenberg to now, for the book to achieve the shape that seems to be optimal for our eyes and hands. Everything that is electronic will achieve the same standard. It will be a different substrate, but there is obviously something in it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have survived for 500 years. The same goes for the screen. I knew it wasn’t going to stay as bad as that. In ’91, Adobe published ATM, Adobe Type Manager, when some of the bitmaps went smooth and there was anti-aliasing. I know it has taken 20 years, but now it’s as good if not better.
Learn as much about our culture as you possibly can, by reading, by traveling, by involving yourself in things that go on. But don’t become an artist. Don’t think, “I’ll do it intuitively.” You have to learn if not to code at least to appreciate code, to understand code. Because code is what nuts and bolts were a hundred years ago.
Had to do two quotes here, it's a great interview, especially his life story at the beginning.
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That anger explains a lot, but the question still remains: how do folks continue to ignore facts? How have people’s viewpoints become so insular and isolated that any contradictory information never even penetrates the bubble? How did we get to a point where dialogue is impossible? And I’m not just referring to this presidential race, but to many other areas of discussion as well. Am I imagining this or has the echo chamber, where one only hears what one agrees with, expanded in scope and at the same time had the effect of increasing that anger and the inability to have a dialogue?
This entire thing is awesome. I had no idea David Byrne had a newsletter, but I'm glad I know now and I'm subscribed.
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Unlike the web of today, where more or less everything exists at a particular address and, if that server goes offline, the content is lost, connected copies ensure that even if one person or company ceases to pay their hosting bills, many other copies persist. Caulfield compares it to a run of books: one library can burn, but odds are every book in its stacks exists elsewhere, so the loss to collective human knowledge is minimal. I couldn’t help but think of this in context of the rising era of platforms on the web and the increasingly dire consequences if (when) some of these systems eventually shut down. It’s very likely that our next Octavia Butler is today writing on WattPad or Tumblr or Facebook. When those servers cease to respond, what will we lose? More than the past is at stake—all our imagined futures are at risk, too.
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But accessibility should be a baseline, not the sum of it all. And I want more from a feed than basic accessibility. I want to fucking learn something. I want to challenge my perception of the world. And, yeah, I want to see pandas rolling in the snow, too, but a panda-only web would be pretty dull. At some point, a feed that you never leave is going to feel like a prison. Platform designers should take heed.
Well, as usual, Mandy has written another great letter. And what I love about this letter so much is that final conclusion. I'm not on very many of the usual networks, and I have people in my life that get upset with me about it, but there are reasons for that, very good ones, and one of them is that I want to discover way more than just what those networks decide I should discover. I want the web, the open web, filled with links.
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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.