April 30, 2020
Don’t Build
Paul Ford:
Silicon Valley VCs want us to “build” right now, but build what? It’s like telling someone sitting in a field of wheat that you’re ready for your pizza. We probably don’t need more blockchains or skyscrapers. We probably do need more bike lanes and nurse practitioners. But who the hell knows?
Don’t build! Because you’ll build the same damn thing you built before. Make lists of broken things. Hospitals shouldn’t have to cut salaries in a crisis; schools shouldn’t be food banks, telemedicine shouldn’t have waiting rooms. The future is right in front of us. It’s ugly as hell, and it’s being hacked together on mobile phones. Learn new tools and think how the tools could fix the broken things.
April 29, 2020
Your privacy depends on other people
Zeynep Tufekci:
There is no longer such a thing as individually “opting out” of our privacy-compromised world.
Your privacy online depends on how other people treat what they think is their information.
April 26, 2020
Weeknote CW18 (S2e2)
Another week in iso.
Let’s just jump right in, shall we?
Monday-Wednesday: Finished a re-do of a report for a client. I thought it was good. They thought it had too much theory and not enough practicality. Fair enough.
Company names are always made up and change week to week.
My team started a project we won last week with Icescape Industries. It’s sort of the same as a project we recently finished with Ogre Lighting but we’re working much closer to the executive at Icescape.
A bit more bizdev here and there.
Thursday: I gave a version of my Design Research 2020 talk for the 4th year Industrial Design class at QUT and then another version for everyone in Symplicit. I really like it, but I think it’s also a very strange talk. Everyone seems to like it though.
Friday: More work with the team working on the Icescape gig and some more bizdev.
What do I wish would be different?
As much as I’m an introvert, and coping well, it’d be nice to be out of iso.
Actually, it’d be nice to get back into the other timeline, where we didn’t have Covid-19.
Draw a timeline of what has happened
What were my high points?
Two high points:
- When my team started some great projects and I could tell a couple of them that they were coming off stand down.
- Having a spirited discussion with a client about an approach we were talking.
What am I sad about?
Sad? Nothing. It’d be nice to get back to normal but first we need to make a new normal, I think.
Who do I want to become?
Pretty happy being me, thanks Question Cards.
Which decisions am I not making?
I think I’m procrastinating on two sort-of-personal and sort-of-self-promotional projects. Not sure why.
weeknote
April 26, 2020
Two spaces
Chairman Gruber:
Bringhurst has always been the final word on this for me.
The two-spaces thing has been a “debate” only in the way that wondering if the earth is round, or if man landed on the moon, or if you should smash up a couple of cherries and orange wedges while mixing an Old Fashioned, have ever been debates. One side has all the experts in agreement; the other side is wrong.
April 21, 2020
I always thought it was real
We’re one month into a worldwide experiment to learn whether the internet alone can produce sufficient meaning on its own, or whether we must keep mining our memories of an embodied shared reality to bridge this gap.
Drew Austin’s Kneeling Bus #122
April 21, 2020
On Painting and Money and Success
Damien Hirst:
You start by thinking you’ll get one assistant and before you know it you’ve got biographers, fire eaters, jugglers, fucking minstrels and lyre players all wandering around. They’re all saying they aren’t being paid enough and they all need assistants. Then one night you ask the lyre player to play for you and they say: “My lyre is all scratched up and I did ask for a lyre technician but you said not yet and if I had one I could come and play for you now.” So you’ve got to have a lyre technician and then you better get him an Uber account too.
/via Benedict Evans’ newsletter.