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
Interaction of Color
The deception of color
In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize
that color deceives continually.What counts here – first and last – is not so-called knowledge
of so-called facts, but vision – seeing.Practice before theory
Instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules
of color harmony, distinct color effects are produced
– through recognition of the interaction of color –
by making, for instance,
2 very different colors look alike, or nearly alike.The aim of such study is to develop – through experience
– by trial and error – an eye for color.
This means, specifically, seeing color action
as well as feeling color relatedness.As a general training it means development of observation and articulation.
This book, therefore, does not follow an academic conception
of “theory and practice.”
It reverses this order and places practice before theory,
which, after all, is the conclusion of practice.50 reds
If one says “Red” (the name of a color)
and there are 50 people listening,
it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.
And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.Not the what but the how
Our concern is the interaction of color; that is, seeing
what happens between colors.We are able to hear a single tone.
But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single color
unconnected and unrelated to other colors.
Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to
changing neighbors and changing conditions.As a consequence, this proves for the reading of color
what Kandinsky often demanded for the reading of art:
what counts is not the what but the how.Scotopic seeing
The sensitivity
and consequently the registration of the retina of an eye is different
from the sensitivity and registration of a photographic film.Normally, black-and-white photography registers all lights lighter
and all darks darker than the more adjustable eye perceives them.
The eye also distinguishes better the so-called middle grays,
which in photography are often flattened if not lost.This shows what a higher key in light can lose in photography.
The greatest advantage the eye has over photography
is its scotopic seeing in addition to its photopic seeing.
The former means, briefly, the retinal adjustment to lower light conditions.Disliked colors
We try to recognize our preferences and our aversions –
what colors dominate in our work; what colors, on the other hand,
are rejected, disliked, or of no appeal. Usually a special effort
in using disliked colors ends with our falling in love with them.Color intervals
The tune of “Good morning to you” consists of 4 tones. It can be sung
in a high soprano, a low basso, and in all in-between voices, as well as
on many levels and in many keys. It can be played on innumerable instruments.In all possible ways of performance, this melody will keep its character
and it will be recognized instantly.Why? The intervals of the 4 tones, that is, their acoustical
constellation (again comparable with a topographical relationship),
remains the same.Although it is not common practice, one can also speak of intervals
between colors.
Colors and hues are defined, as are tones in music, by wavelength.Any color (shade or tint) always has 2 decisive characteristics:
color intensity (brightness) and light intensity (lightness).
Therefore, color intervals also have this double-sidedness, this duality.Time and space
Tones appear placed and directed predominantly in time from before to now to later.
Their juxtaposition in a musical composition is perceived
within a prescribed sequence only.
Horizontally, the tones follow each other,
perhaps not in a straight line, but of necessity in a prescribed order
and only in 1 direction – forward.
Tones heard earlier fade, and those farther back disappear, vanish.
We do not hear them backward.Colors appear connected predominantly in space. Therefore,
as constellations they can be seen in any direction and
at any speed. And as they remain, we can return to them repeatedly
and in many ways.
This remaining and not remaining, or vanishing and not vanishing,
shows only 1 essential difference between the fields of tone
and color.The accuracy of perception in one field is matched
by the durability of retention in the other, demonstrating
a curious reversal in visual and auditory memory.A cook with taste
Observe the interior and exterior, the furniture and textile decoration
following such color schemes, as well as commercialized color “suggestions”
for innumerable do-it-yourselves.Our conclusion: we may forget for a while those rules of thumb
of complementaries, whether complete or “split”, and of triads and
tetrads as well.
They are worn out.Second, no mechanical color system is flexible enough
to precalculate the manifold changing factors, as named before,
in a single prescribed recipe.Good painting, good coloring, is comparable to good cooking.
Even a good cooking recipe demands tasting and repeated tasting
while it is being followed.
And the best tasting still depends on a cook with taste.Flexible imagination
By giving up preference for harmony,
we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance.Besides a balance through color harmony, which is comparable
to symmetry, there is equilibrium possible between
color tensions, related to a more dynamic asymmetry.Again: knowledge and its application is not our aim;
instead, it is flexible imagination, discovery, invention – taste.Does it have color?
Whether something “has color” or not is as hard to define verbally as are
such questions as “what is music” or “what is musical."The Weber-Fechner law
Exponential increases in physical stimuli produce linear perceptual increases.
Thinking in situations
Naturally, practice is not preceded but followed by theory.
Such study promotes a more lasting teaching and learning
through experience. Its aim is development of creativeness
realized in discovery and invention – the criteria of creativity,
or flexibility, being imagination and fantasy. Altogether
it promotes “thinking in situations,” a new educational concept
unfortunately little known and less cultivated, so far.Not of method but of heart
In the end, teaching is a matter not of method but of heart.
The teacher actually is right and always will gain confidence
when he admits that he does not know, that he cannot decide, and,
as it often is with color, that he is unable to make a choice
or to give advice.Besides, good teaching is more a giving of right questions
than a giving of right answers.Results of a search
This book presents results of a search, not of what is academically called research.
In addition to the dedication of this book, I should like to state that my students in color have taught me more color than have books about color.
Simple forms
The concept that “the simpler the form of a letter the simpler its reading” was an obsession of beginning constructivism. It became something like a dogma, and is still followed by “modernistic” typographers.
This notion has proved to be wrong, because in reading we do not read letters but words, words as a whole, as a “word picture.” Ophthalmology has disclosed that the more the letters are differentiated from each other, the easier is the reading.
Without going into comparisons and the details, it should be realized that words consisting of only capital letters present the most difficult reading—because of their equal height, equal volume, and, with most, their equal width. When comparing serif letters with sans-serif, the latter provide an uneasy reading. The fashionable preference for sans-serif in text shows neither historical nor practical competence.