This guy hans reiser, apparently some kind of hard-core coder, has an interesting observation on information theory: if you add to the length of time it takes to access a piece of info, you divide the number of people who will ever access it.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/03/06/18/1516239/Hans-Reiser-Speaks-Freely-About-Free-Software-Development
Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
experience economy
The basic idea of the experience economy was in my head soon after I got to ID, but I am only now reading it firsthand. The 1998 HBR article seems to be an excellent blueprint for creating a design consultancy - I would be very interested to know if any consultancies explicitly used this method, or if Pine and Gilmore had done work with any of those consultancies.
In particular, it seems that the consultancies are elevating research (possibly education - maybe this is the generalization we're building now at ID) from a service to an experience. I like to oversimplify such things in the form of an earnest, text-heavy, 50-s style advertisement:
"Does your company lack knowledge in a particular field, or are you having trouble with a particular process? Call us - not only will we enable you to build what you want to build, but we'll make you rock stars in the process and give you the opportunity to tell all your buddies at the golf course that you are working with some of the world's most talented people.
Compare this to the alternatives of the painful learn-it-yourself approach, or the humbling experience of asking for help, or the (acutally I'm not sure what it's like) experience of getting BCG to drop by, and it's clear they've found a great opportunity space. Next experience to offer:
"So your company/city/ruling party has collapsed. It's no time to venally try to hang on to power - come to the Transformation Institute and relax in the sun while taking in the latest ideas from others in your situation while we all work together to plot the next venture/revolution."
In particular, it seems that the consultancies are elevating research (possibly education - maybe this is the generalization we're building now at ID) from a service to an experience. I like to oversimplify such things in the form of an earnest, text-heavy, 50-s style advertisement:
"Does your company lack knowledge in a particular field, or are you having trouble with a particular process? Call us - not only will we enable you to build what you want to build, but we'll make you rock stars in the process and give you the opportunity to tell all your buddies at the golf course that you are working with some of the world's most talented people.
Compare this to the alternatives of the painful learn-it-yourself approach, or the humbling experience of asking for help, or the (acutally I'm not sure what it's like) experience of getting BCG to drop by, and it's clear they've found a great opportunity space. Next experience to offer:
"So your company/city/ruling party has collapsed. It's no time to venally try to hang on to power - come to the Transformation Institute and relax in the sun while taking in the latest ideas from others in your situation while we all work together to plot the next venture/revolution."
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Action vs Reflection
I'm so glad for the intellectual revolutions of the 60s and 70s. The earlier generation dealt with tearing the structure down the ground and then rejecting what remained of it inside themselves.
It is clear that they were generally right - but it's equally clear that they had to fail. Just because we recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the situation - whether it's our society our ourselves - there is no option of giving it all up.
Even with all of the mind-freeing and radical experimentation of the past few decades, we still see that our government enacts horrors while most of our social institutions are (at best) distracted. We have all heard the call to stand up for the environment, for the disenfranchised, for the children. Yet still, Al Gore gave up the presidency.
Yes, we are disillusioned - try as we might to hold onto the dreams of utopia in our literary havens, we can't devote ourselves to the vision of a future that our parents fought for. They rioted, they dissented, they rebelled - yet still, all over our great country (and increasingly all over the world) life is defined by material possessions and experiences consist mostly of interacting with faceless retail corporations.
But just as much as we have lost the illusion of a peaceful, natural, synergetic future Small World After All, we have gained the perspective that comes at the dusk of the golden age of a civilization.
We have seen so many of those hippies settle down and get real jobs and raise kids in the very social, political, and economic structure whose validity they once questioned, encouraging them to excel in the only dimension which seems to be available. (to climb the only ladder which we have?)
We've seen the corporations that poison our environemnt with products and pollute our culture with ads begin to embrace their own evolution and breed with the counterculture.
We've seen the greatest of oppressors provide unity and growth in local communities while nonprofits and academia are revealed to be strong supporters and excellent progenitors of the existing power structure.
Yet we don't lose hope - because we know that these are us. They are made by, for, and of us, even if we don't like what htey are doing.
Detaching ourselves from our history - and by implication, from our present - would be equivalent to raising ourselves up by our own bootstraps. They discovered that cutting out the greed, the exclusionism, and the small-mindedness that characterize too much of human affiars, we would have to give up the stability, the satisfaction of achievement, and the love that make it worthwhile to struggle and suffer.
Yet it is, in fact, a physical reality (if only at a quantum level, for massless particles) that energy expended in a new direction can experience a feedback loop and gather strength and momentum from its reflection in its own medium.
It is clear that they were generally right - but it's equally clear that they had to fail. Just because we recognize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the situation - whether it's our society our ourselves - there is no option of giving it all up.
Even with all of the mind-freeing and radical experimentation of the past few decades, we still see that our government enacts horrors while most of our social institutions are (at best) distracted. We have all heard the call to stand up for the environment, for the disenfranchised, for the children. Yet still, Al Gore gave up the presidency.
Yes, we are disillusioned - try as we might to hold onto the dreams of utopia in our literary havens, we can't devote ourselves to the vision of a future that our parents fought for. They rioted, they dissented, they rebelled - yet still, all over our great country (and increasingly all over the world) life is defined by material possessions and experiences consist mostly of interacting with faceless retail corporations.
But just as much as we have lost the illusion of a peaceful, natural, synergetic future Small World After All, we have gained the perspective that comes at the dusk of the golden age of a civilization.
We have seen so many of those hippies settle down and get real jobs and raise kids in the very social, political, and economic structure whose validity they once questioned, encouraging them to excel in the only dimension which seems to be available. (to climb the only ladder which we have?)
We've seen the corporations that poison our environemnt with products and pollute our culture with ads begin to embrace their own evolution and breed with the counterculture.
We've seen the greatest of oppressors provide unity and growth in local communities while nonprofits and academia are revealed to be strong supporters and excellent progenitors of the existing power structure.
Yet we don't lose hope - because we know that these are us. They are made by, for, and of us, even if we don't like what htey are doing.
Detaching ourselves from our history - and by implication, from our present - would be equivalent to raising ourselves up by our own bootstraps. They discovered that cutting out the greed, the exclusionism, and the small-mindedness that characterize too much of human affiars, we would have to give up the stability, the satisfaction of achievement, and the love that make it worthwhile to struggle and suffer.
Yet it is, in fact, a physical reality (if only at a quantum level, for massless particles) that energy expended in a new direction can experience a feedback loop and gather strength and momentum from its reflection in its own medium.
craigslist design
From wired.com, an analysis of craigslist and how and why it's one of the biggest communities on the internet despite the fact that it doesn't put any effort at all towards design, marketing, presentation, etc.
""
The truth is that a lot of people complain about craigslist. Buckmaster is correct that few of them complain about the design. They complain about spam, they complain about fraud, they complain about the posting rules, they complain about the search, they complain about uploading images. They complain about every way a classified transaction can go wrong. They seldom complain about amazing new features they imagine they might possibly want to use, because they are too busy complaining about the simple features they depend on that don't work as well as they'd like.
""
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=3
""
The truth is that a lot of people complain about craigslist. Buckmaster is correct that few of them complain about the design. They complain about spam, they complain about fraud, they complain about the posting rules, they complain about the search, they complain about uploading images. They complain about every way a classified transaction can go wrong. They seldom complain about amazing new features they imagine they might possibly want to use, because they are too busy complaining about the simple features they depend on that don't work as well as they'd like.
""
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=3
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
philosophy and details
It looks like I've decided to focus on interaction design (or, perhaps it would be better to call it at this point software design, perhaps even programming, until I get familiar enough with the medium to really produce something new and/or compelling).
I've had trouble the past few years committing to anything particular as a career goal or path, because performing any particular task seemed to limit my focus, learning, and abilities to simply that activity. I think ID has shown me how to work on the tiniest details with utter abandon until they are of the highest quality possible, the highest quality produced in the world. But the professors here didn't do it by showing me how to polish and polish until something shines (though there is some of that, thanks Larry) - they showed me how to do it by linking the niggling, insignificant, myriad details with the big, fuzzy, philosophical-worldview-level, which is the only part I find compelling.
My next task is to become more adept at creating a smooth gradation in my storytelling between the details and the framework. For now, I only have time to jump straight into the lowest level.
Bug List
Print Settings
When you press the 'print' button icon, that skips the options dialogue boxes, in Word or InDesign, do you know which settings are being used? Is it printing with the formatting that you used for the full-color, tabloid sized poster you printed yesterday, or did you print a simple text document since then? Will you get four copies, or just pages 4 and 6? I've learned to check the dialog box every time I print anything - why doesn't the button give some indication of the active print settings it will enact? Even better, these applications should allow me to create several different print settings and turn them into buttons on the menu for quick access.
I've had trouble the past few years committing to anything particular as a career goal or path, because performing any particular task seemed to limit my focus, learning, and abilities to simply that activity. I think ID has shown me how to work on the tiniest details with utter abandon until they are of the highest quality possible, the highest quality produced in the world. But the professors here didn't do it by showing me how to polish and polish until something shines (though there is some of that, thanks Larry) - they showed me how to do it by linking the niggling, insignificant, myriad details with the big, fuzzy, philosophical-worldview-level, which is the only part I find compelling.
My next task is to become more adept at creating a smooth gradation in my storytelling between the details and the framework. For now, I only have time to jump straight into the lowest level.
Bug List
Print Settings
When you press the 'print' button icon, that skips the options dialogue boxes, in Word or InDesign, do you know which settings are being used? Is it printing with the formatting that you used for the full-color, tabloid sized poster you printed yesterday, or did you print a simple text document since then? Will you get four copies, or just pages 4 and 6? I've learned to check the dialog box every time I print anything - why doesn't the button give some indication of the active print settings it will enact? Even better, these applications should allow me to create several different print settings and turn them into buttons on the menu for quick access.
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