Technology
Only a commercial and utilitarian view
An ethics of mutual care
Imagine the world like a cake
Induced communication
Estrangement and detachment, hospitals and airports
Fascination with control
The technology shelf
Chilled-out anxiety
The most seamless and wonderful way
Savage, hostile, and cruel
Creations of human artifice
Technology is a system
Technological middle age
Screening out the world
Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
The Real World of Technology
A Brief Rant
Primer
Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web
Our Comrade The Electron
The Future of Programming
Always Already Programming
Snipping the dead blooms
Builder Brain
A time to build and a time to repair
The Future Is Not Only Useless, It’s Expensive
How can we develop transformative tools for thought?
Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
An Article by Kevin KellyThere are two classes of problems caused by new technology. Class 1 problems are due to it not working perfectly. Class 2 problems are due to it working perfectly.
...Class 1 problems arise early and they are easy to imagine. Usually market forces will solve them. You could say, most Class 1 problems are solved along the way as they rush to become Class 2 problems. Class 2 problems are much harder to solve because they require more than just the invisible hand of the market to overcome them.
...Class 1 problems are caused by technology that is not perfect, and are solved by the marketplace. Class 2 problems are caused by technology that is perfect, and must be solved by extra-market forces such as cultural norms, regulation, and social imagination.
The medium is the message
A Quote by Marshall McLuhanStepping out of the firehose
An Article by Benedict EvansIn 1800, if you’d said that you wanted something ‘made by hand’, that would be meaningless - everything was handmade. But half a century later, it could be a reaction against the age of the machine - of steam and coal-smoke and ‘dark satanic mills.’ The Arts and Crafts movement proposed slow, hand-made, imperfect craft in reaction to mass-produced ‘perfection’ (and a lot of other things besides). A century later this is one reason I’m fascinated by the new luxury goods platforms LVMH and Kering, or indeed Supreme. How do you mass-manufacture, mass-market and mass-retail things whose entire nature is supposedly that they’re individual?
...we keep building tools, but also we let go. That’s part of the progression - Arts and Crafts was a reaction against what became the machine age, but Bauhaus and futurism embraced it. If the ‘metaverse’ means anything, it reflects that we have all grown up with this now, and we’re looking at ways to absorb it, internalise it and reflect it in our lives and in popular culture - to take ownership of it. When software eats the world, it’s not software anymore.
The Questions Concerning Technology
An Essay by L.M. Sarcasas- What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
- What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
- Does the use of this technology bring me joy?
- What limits does the use of this technology impose upon me?
- Upon what systems, technical or human, does my use of this technology depend? Are these systems just?
The return of fancy tools
An Article by Tom MacWrightTechnology is seeing a little return to complexity. Dreamweaver gave way to hand-coding websites, which is now leading into Webflow, which is a lot like Dreamweaver. Evernote give way to minimal Markdown notes, which are now becoming Notion, Coda, or Craft. Visual Studio was “disrupted” by Sublime Text and TextMate, which are now getting replaced by Visual Studio Code. JIRA was replaced by GitHub issues, which is getting outmoded by Linear. The pendulum swings back and forth, which isn’t a bad thing
Against Canvas
An Article by Alan JacobsEven with all the features and plugins, Canvas presumes certain ways of organizing classes that might not be universal, just typical. And if (like me) you’re an atypical user, you have to choose between constantly fighting with the system or gradually doing more and more things the way Canvas wants you to do them. This, by the way, is why it’s never true to say that technologies are neutral and what matters is how you use them: every technology without exception has affordances, certain actions that it makes easy, and other actions that it makes difficult or impossible. A technology whose affordances run contrary to your convictions can rob you of your independence — and any technology deployed on the scale of Canvas will inevitably do that. It will turn every teacher into an obedient Canvas-user. I don’t want to be an obedient Canvas-user.
Why I'm losing faith in UX
An Article by Mark HurstIncreasingly, I think UX doesn't live up to its original meaning of "user experience." Instead, much of the discipline today, as it's practiced in Big Tech firms, is better described by a new name.
UX is now "user exploitation."
Broken world thinking
A Fragment by Amanda MenkingConsider, for example, how “broken world thinking” can benefit product design. What if the person (or team) who invented a new technology collaborated with the person (or team) who would one day repair the same technology? What if the innovation stakeholders and the infrastructure stakeholders collaborated closely with the end users? What if every new product designed by a technology company was designed in such as way as to factor in what happens to the product after planned obsolescence?
Withered or seasoned?
An Article by Robin SloanThe Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.
This is the reason a Nintendo console never has the fastest chips or the beefiest specs of its generation; instead, its remixes components in an interesting and generative way. Think of the Gameboy’s monochrome screen, the Wii’s motion controller, the Switch’s smartphone form.
[Gunpei Yokoi] is talking about reliability and predictability, in performance and supply alike. He wants the components to be boring, so their application can be daring.
People expect technology to suck because it actually sucks
An Article by Nikita ProkopovI decided to record every broken interaction I had during one day.
If I decided to invest time into thinning this list down, I could theoretically...reduce this list from 27 down to 24. At least 24 annoyances per day I have to live with. That’s the world WE ALL are living in now. Welcome.
The Mother of All Demos
A Lecture by Douglas EngelbartA name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, presented by Douglas Engelbart on December 9, 1968. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing:
- windows,
- hypertext,
- graphics,
- efficient navigation and command input,
- video conferencing,
- the computer mouse,
- word processing,
- dynamic file linking,
- revision control,
- and a collaborative real-time editor
What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook
A Research Paper by Benjamin GrosserWhat are the effects of this enumeration, of these metrics that count our social interactions? In other words, how are the designs of Facebook leading us to act, and to interact in certain ways and not in others? For example, would we add as many friends if we weren’t constantly confronted with how many we have? Would we “like” as many ads if we weren’t told how many others liked them before us? Would we comment on others’ statuses as often if we weren’t told how many friends responded to each comment?
In this paper, I question the effects of metrics from three angles. First I examine how our need for personal worth, within the confines of capitalism, transforms into an insatiable “desire for more.” Second, with this desire in mind, I analyze the metric components of Facebook’s interface using a software studies methodology, exploring how these numbers function and how they act upon the site’s users. Finally, I discuss my software, born from my research-based artistic practice, called Facebook Demetricator (2012-present). Facebook Demetricator removes all metrics from the Facebook interface, inviting the site’s users to try the system without the numbers and to see how that removal changes their experience. With this free web browser extension, I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality produced through metrics, enabling a social media culture less dependent on quantification.
Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web
A Book by David Weinberger
The Book of Tea
In the teacup
Strangely enough
humanity has so far met
in the teacup.The greatness of little things
Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.
The reality of the building
One day I went to my study at Taliesen to sit down and rest. I picked up a little book just received from the ambassador to America from Japan. It was called The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo. I wonder how many of you have read it? Well, in that little book I came upon quotations from the great Chinese poet-prophet Laotze, things he had said five hundred years before Jesus. As I turned the pages I suddenly came across this: "The reality of the building does not consist in the four walls and the roof but in the space within to be lived in..."
The answer is, reality is the space within, into which you can put something. In other words, the idea. And so it is with architecture; so it is with your lives; and so it is with everything you can experience as reality. You will soon find out for yourselves if you begin to work with this principle in mind, that things will open to you...Therein lies the secret of great peace, missing in Western Civilization today.
What a tempest in a teacup!
The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a teacup! he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the teacup. Mankind has done worse.
To bring out its noblest qualities
Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea...each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat, its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must always be in it. How much do we not suffer through the constant failure of society to recognize this simple and fundamental law of art and life.
Man hideth not
For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought. Confucius said that "man hideth not." Perhaps we reveal ourselves too much in small things because we have so little of the great to conceal.
A state of quietness
Tea is said to be the way. This is because it is something one learns to appreciate through feeling, not through verbal instructions. If a person maintains a state of quietness, only then will one appreciate the quietness inherent in tea.
Translation is always a treason
Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade—all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of color or design. But, after all, what great doctrine is there which is easy to expound? The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise. Lau Tzu himself, with his quaint humor, says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it."
The mundane and the spiritual
A special contribution of Zen to Eastern thought was its recognition of the mundane as of equal importance with the spiritual. It held that in the great relation of things there was no distinction of small and great, an atom possessing equal possibilities with the universe. The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the refection of the inner light. The organization of the Zen monastery was very significant of this point of view. To every member, except the abbot, was assigned some special work in the caretaking of the monastery, and curiously enough, to the novices was committed the lighter duties, while to the most respected and advanced monks were given the more irksome and menial tasks. Such services formed a part of the Zen discipline and every least action must be done absolutely perfectly. Thus many a weighty discussion ensued while weeding the garden, paring a turnip, or serving tea. The whole ideal of Teaism is a result of this Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life. Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical.
More than the Graces and less than the Muses
The Sukiya consists of the tea room proper, designed to accommodate not more than five persons, a number suggestive of the saying "more than the Graces and less than the Muses..."
The tea room is unimpressive in appearance. It is smaller than the smallest of Japanese houses, while the materials used in its construction are intended to give the suggestion of refined poverty. Yet we must remember that all this is the result of profound artistic forethought, and that the details have been worked out with care perhaps even greater than that expended on the building of the richest palaces and temples. A good tea room is more costly than an ordinary mansion, for the selection of its materials, as well as its workmanship, requires immense care and precision. Indeed, the carpenters employed by the tea masters form a distinct and highly honored class among artisans, their work being no less delicate than that of the makers of lacquer cabinets.
One who has trodden this garden path
The roji, the garden path which leads from the machiai to the tea room, signified the first stage of meditation—the passage into self-illumination. The roji was intended to break connection with the outside world, and to produce a fresh sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in the tea room itself. One who has trodden this garden path cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above ordinary thoughts. One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of civilization.
...Thus prepared the guest will silently approach the sanctuary, and, if a samurai, will leave his sword on the rack beneath the eaves, the tea room being preeminently the house of peace. Then he will bend low and creep into the room through a small door not more than three feet in height. This proceeding was incumbent on all guests—high and low alike—and was intended to inculcate humility.
Scraps of the brocade of autumn
There is a story of Rikyu which well illustrates the ideas of cleanliness entertained by the tea masters. Rikyu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path. "Not clean enough," said Rikyu, when Shoan had finished his task, and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikyu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground"
"Young fool," chided the tea master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept. "Saying this, Rikyu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! What Rikvu demanded was not cleanliness alone, but the beautiful and the natural also.
The Abode of Fancy
The name, Abode of Fancy, implies a structure created to meet some individual artistic requirement. The tea room is made for the tea master, not the tea master for the tea room. It is not intended for posterity and is therefore ephemeral. The idea that everyone should have a house of his own is based on an ancient custom of & the Japanese race, Shinto superstition ordaining that every dwelling should be evacuated on the death of its chief occupant. Perhaps there may have been some unrealized sanitary reason for this practice. Another early custom was that a newly built house should be provided for each couple that married. It is on account of such customs that we find the Imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.
Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less
It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing now through an age of democratization in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.
The Abode of Vacancy
The term, "Abode of Vacancy," besides conveying the Taoist theory of the all-containing, involves the conception of a continued need of change in decorative motives. The tea room is absolutely empty, except for what may be placed there temporarily to satisfy some aesthetic mood. Some special art object is brought in for the occasion, and everything else is selected and arranged to enhance the beauty of the principal theme. One cannot listen to different pieces of music at the same time, a real comprehension of the beautiful being possible only through concentration upon some central motive.
The Abode of the Unsymmetrical
The decoration of our classical interiors was decidedly regular in its arrangement. The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection, however, was different. The dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth. In the tea room it is left for each guest in imagination to complete the total effect in relation to himself. Since Zennism has become the prevailing mode of thought, the art of the extreme Orient has purposely avoided the symmetrical as expressing not only completion, but repetition.
We wonder which is real, he of the picture or he who talks?
In the tea room the fear of repetition is a constant presence. The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so selected that no color or design shall be repeated. If you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowable. If you are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular. A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy of black lacquer. In placing a vase or an incense burner on the tokonoma, care should be taken not to put it in the exact center, lest it divide the space into equal halves. The pillar of the tokonoma should be of a different kind of wood from the other pillars, in order to break any suggestion of monotony in the room.
Here again the Japanese method of interior decoration differs from that of the Occident, where we see objects arrayed symmetrically on mantelpieces and elsewhere. In Western houses we are often confronted with what appears to us useless reiteration. We find it trying to talk to a man while his full-length portrait stares at us from behind his back. We wonder which is real, he of the picture or he who talks, and feel a curious conviction that one of them must be fraud.
What the masters had chosen
The tea master, Kobori-Enshiu, himself a daimyo, has left to us these memorable words: "Approach a great painting as thou wouldst approach a great prince." In order to understand a masterpiece, you must lay yourself low before it and await with bated breath its least utterance. An eminent Sung critic once made a charming confession. Said he: "In my young days I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my judgment matured I praised myself for liking what the masters had chosen to have me like."
This only proves how commonplace I am
One is reminded in this connection of a story concerning Kobori-Enshiu. Enshiu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his collection. Said they, "Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikyu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand." Sorrowfully Enshiu replied: "This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikyu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority. Verily, Rikyu was one in a thousand among tea masters."
We classify too much and enjoy too little
A collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can teach us more than any number of the mediocre products of a given period or school. We classify too much and enjoy too little. The sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called scientific method of exhibition has been the bane of many museums.
Tell me, gentle flowers
Tell me, gentle flowers, teardrops of the stars, standing in the garden, nodding your heads to the bees as they sing of the dews and the sunbeams, are you aware of the fearful doom that awaits vou? Dream on, sway and frolic while you may in the gentle breezes of summer. Tomorrow a ruthless hand will close around your throats.
The man of the pot
In the West the display of flowers seems to be a part of the pageantry of wealth—the fancy of a moment. Whither do they all go, these flowers, when the revelry is over? Nothing is more pitiful than to see a faded flower remorselessly flung upon a dung heap.
...Much may be said in favor of him who cultivates plants. The man of the pot is far more humane than he of the scissors.
...Anyone acquainted with the ways of our tea and Flower Masters must have noticed the religious veneration with which they regard flowers. They do not cull at random, but carefully select each branch or spray with an eye to the artistic composition they have in mind. They would be ashamed should they chance to cut more than were absolutely necessary. It may be remarked in this connection that they always associate the leaves, if there be any, with the flower, for their object is to present the whole beauty of plant life. In this respect, as in many others, their method differs from that pursued in Western countries. Here we are apt to see only the flower stems, heads as it were, without body, stuck promiscuously into a vase.
If removed from the place for which it was intended
A flower arrangement by a tea master loses its significance if removed from the place for which it was originally intended, for its lines and proportions have been specially worked out with a view to its surroundings.
He only who has lived with the beautiful
He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully. The last moments of the great tea masters were as full of exquisite refinement as had been their lives. Seeking always to be in harmony with the great rhythm of the universe, they were ever prepared to enter the unknown.