This Interview with Clive Thompson About Twitter, Ambient Awareness, Socrates, and Recency Bias is really interesting. Clive has a decidedly more positive take on technology than what we’ve come to expect recently:

There’s an idea, popular with many text-based folks—like myself, and many journalists and academics—that reading books is thinking; that if you’re not sitting for hours reading a tome, you’re not, in some essential way, thinking. This is completely false. A huge amount of our everyday thinking—powerful, creative, and resonant stuff—is done socially: talking to other people, arguing with them, relying on them to recall information for us. This has been true for aeons in the offline world. But now we have new ways to think socially online—and to do so with likeminded folks around the world, which is still insanely mind-blowing. It never stops being lovely for me.

The interview covers some of the material Clive talks about in his new book Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better, which is definitely next on my list (after On Writing Well, which is kicking my butt right now). Also, I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone, but I share highlights from the ebooks I read on the Twitter account @rianisreading.

Brad Frost’s article on the Techcrunch redesign is a great case study of a modern responsive design process. A few things stood out for me, and remain open questions that I wish I could ask Brad about.

First, there is no mention of user research. There was a kick-off meeting, with some Design Studio work, but how did they identify user needs, and why was there no user testing on their prototypes? That’s a bit perplexing.

Second, it’s really nice to see Brad take a more nuanced stance on the whole Post-PSD Era thing, and admit that comps can be useful under the right circumstances:

Believe it or not, we did indeed create a few full comps. Gasp! Horror!

But the difference between this and all the other projects I’ve ever worked on is that we didn’t lead with the comps. By the time Dan made some comps (for the homepage and featured article page), we had established many of our key molecules and organisms, and had an understanding of the systematic nature of our design.

That’s how we do it in our agency as well, so I’m glad to find out that we’re not completely insane.

And lastly, it would’ve been great to get a little more detail on how much backend developers were involved through the process. Brad mentions it briefly:

From the design end of things, Dan went through and created an incredibly detailed list of minor design tweaks that tightened things up and got things ready for final delivery to be implemented into their WordPress backend by the fine folks at 10up (who by the way were involved throughout the course of this process).

“Final delivery” and “were involved throughout” are two phrases that don’t sit very well together, so I wonder how that worked practically.

Don’t get me wrong — this is a great process, and they obviously got some impressive results. These are just some things I wondered about as I read through the case study.

Daniel Jalkut discusses the rate of software/app updates in Stagnation Or Stability?:

As an onlooker, it’s easy to associate dramatic change and motion with competence, and quiet refinement with laziness. We must draw on our own experiences attempting to build great things to appreciate how much work takes place in stillness, to have faith that even though things may appear stagnant, a benefit of frictionlessness is resulting. An app at rest may be in that long, arduous phase of becoming finely crafted.

Daniel’s post is a response to the recent Michael Lopp article R.I.P. Things, in which he explains that he’s dropping Things as his productivity app mainly because of its lack of updates. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. How our expectations about app pricing and rate of change is placing unfair (and damaging) pressure on developers to release new versions of their apps constantly — even if it’s just change for the sake of change.

The other unintended consequence of this never-ending update cycle is that we’re starting to see evidence of what Chris Bowler calls App Fatigue:

I must admit, I’ve felt a bit of what I term app fatigue in the past year. What is this? Simply the lack of desire to either a) pay for another version of an app I already own or b) go through the steps required to update this app and become accustomed to the changes.

My own feelings about this remain wildly erratic at the moment. Sometimes I’m on Michael’s side. Like most people I was champing at the bit for Tweetbot 3, and as much as I appreciated the “It’ll be ready when it’s ready” line, my impatience got the better of me. Yesterday Apple “finally” updated their last built-in app for iOS 7. But we’re still stuck with an ugly WhatsApp, orphaned versions of OmniFocus, Tweetbot and Instapaper for iPad, and a Foursquare that hasn’t been updated in weeks — weeks, I tell you. What up with that? I turned off automatic app updates because I love going to the App Store and checking what wonderful new things I’m going to get today.

And then, at other times, I’m with Chris Bowler. OmniFocus runs my life, so I shouldn’t complain about paying $20 for the gorgeous new iPhone version, but it ended up being quite the grudge purchase. Same with Fantastical 2. And I know that my insatiable hunger for new features every day is probably doing more damage than good. Because Daniel is right: “An app at rest may be in that long, arduous phase of becoming finely crafted.” But if we show up at developers’ doors with pitchforks every couple of weeks, demanding our new features, there is no time for the app to be at rest. Eventually, Experience Rot will set in, and it will be our fault:

As more features are added, it becomes harder to make the overall design coherent and sensical. Soon features are crammed into corners that don’t make sense.

I guess I’m preaching to myself here. I’m hoping to convince myself to be a bit more patient with app developers, and give them the time they need to slow down and refine.

Thanks to Voila for sponsoring Elezea’s RSS feed this week!

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

We’ve seen a lot of articles about the negative effects of social networks this year. And yes, I’ve even written a few of those. So it was refreshing to read Roxane Gay’s What Twitter does — a reflection on the positive side of social networks:

Social networking does not offer a universal panacea, but it is something far more significant than “constant self-promotion.” The bonds of this community, at least the one I have found, are sprawled and unruly, but these bonds are not merely virtual. I travel all the time and wherever I go, I meet people with whom I am acquainted online. There may be initial awkwardness, but always, always, there is familiarity. We may not know each other but we know something of each other. We are a little less alone. Sometimes, the change technology brings is simple, intimate, and still significant.

One of the main criticisms against social media is that it fosters superficial relationships. Roxane’s point is that knowing a few superficial things about someone is better than knowing nothing, because it gives you a head start on a possible friendship.

A big thanks to Techi.com for sponsoring Elezea’s RSS feed this week!

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Tom Simonite wrote a very interesting investigative piece called The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create It:

Wikipedia’s community built a system and resource unique in the history of civilization. It proved a worthy, perhaps fatal, match for conventional ways of building encyclopedias. But that community also constructed barriers that deter the newcomers needed to finish the job. Perhaps it was too much to expect that a crowd of Internet strangers would truly democratize knowledge. Today’s Wikipedia, even with its middling quality and poor representation of the world’s diversity, could be the best encyclopedia we will get.

The article also reminds me of one of the best episodes of Hypercritical ever, called Marked for Deletion. John Siracusa goes into a highly entertaining and informative tirade about the problems with Wikipedia, which is well worth the listen.

Jonathan Franzen wrote a Guardian piece on what’s wrong with the modern world. It’s long and dense and sometimes requires multiple re-readings to figure out what’s going on, but he gives us much to think about. Let’s just say that he’s not a fan of what technology is doing to us:

One of the worst things about the internet is that it tempts everyone to be a sophisticate — to take positions on what is hip and to consider, under pain of being considered unhip, the positions that everyone else is taking.

He also has some harsh words for Amazon:

Amazon wants a world in which books are either self-published or published by Amazon itself, with readers dependent on Amazon reviews in choosing books, and with authors responsible for their own promotion. The work of yakkers and tweeters and braggers, and of people with the money to pay somebody to churn out hundreds of five-star reviews for them, will flourish in that world.

And that’s all I’ll quote from the article, in the hopes of piquing your interest to read the whole thing.

John Gruber in Thoughts and Observations Regarding This Week’s Apple Event Introducing the iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini:

This puts Microsoft in a tight spot. Apple gives away software for free in exchange for your buying their hardware. This is not charity. It’s also in marked contrast to Google, who gives away software for free in exchange for selling your attention (and personal information) to advertisers. Apple and Google are squeezing Microsoft from both sides, and the result is that less and less perceived value in the industry resides solely in software. You can make money selling hardware (like Apple) or make money selling ads (like Google), but given the popularity of Apple’s hardware and Google’s apps and services, it’s getting harder for Microsoft to make money by selling software.

John Moltz in Rudderless Microsoft:

I don’t think Microsoft is going anywhere. I mean that in two ways: 1) I mean they’re not going away and 2) right now they’re not going where the puck is going. They’re sailing somewhat aimlessly though increasingly margin-less waters. And the degree to which Microsoft’s investors, boosters and followers are OK with that is rather baffling.

It’s hard to write about Microsoft. If you think they’re doing great things you get ridicule from the Apple side. If you think they’re headed for disaster you’re labeled as a brainwashed fanboy. As with most things, the truth is more likely somewhere in the middle. But even the most die-hard Microsoft fan has to admit that Microsoft has been painted into a corner:

• By making OS X 10.9 and its core apps free, Apple is creating an expectation that all operating systems should be free. It doesn’t matter that fewer computers run OS X — it’s about the precedent and how that affects consumer expectations.
• By making services like Gmail and Docs “free”1, and by continuing to reduce the feature set gaps between those services and Microsoft Office, Google is forcing users to ask tough questions about the software they’re using, and why they’re paying so much for it. When authors like Charles Stross start taking on industry conventions by writing Why Microsoft Word must Die, you need to realise that your product is walking very close to the edge of a tipping point.

And yet, Microsoft appears to be doubling down on what are their two biggest strategic mistakes.

First, they’re not owning the whole hardware/software supply chain. Reading Gartner’s advice to Apple in 2006 is almost funny now in how wrong it ended up being:

Increasing component costs and pressure to cut its prices mean Apple’s best bet for long-term success is to quit the hardware business and license the Mac to Dell, analyst firm Gartner claimed on Tuesday.

The point is simple: if Microsoft can’t make money on PC hardware (which they can’t), they need to make money on the software. But that gets very hard when the “free” options become more and more appealing. Yes, most organizations still rely on Exchange for their mail and calendars. But how long can that last when employees all switch to Gmail and can’t shut up about how horrible Outlook is? RIM thought they had the enterprise market locked up because they controlled IT managers. How did that work out for them once employees starting rushing the IT castle, demanding support for their iPhones?

Second, Microsoft is sticking with their “You don’t have to compromise!” philosophy. Does Surface run a a desktop OS, or a tablet OS? Neither, and both! And that is a huge problem. By not making “compromises” they’re actually compromising way too much. Perhaps Doug Bowman summed it up best:

@gruber On the C word. Someone recently put it to me that all design is a series of compromises; but good design finds the right ones.

— Doug Bowman (@stop) February 6, 2013

Trying to use a desktop OS on a tablet isn’t “no compromise”, it’s utter frustration, and it doesn’t look like Microsoft is planning to stop doing that any time soon. From Engadget’s Microsoft Surface Pro 2 review:

As a tablet, the Surface Pro has made fewer strides. And that’s a shame, since the Pro is, at its heart, a tablet. […] The new Pro is much improved, but it’s still at its best in notebook mode. Indeed, whoever buys this needs to want a tablet and laptop in more or less equal measure. Because if what you really want is a laptop you can occasionally use as a tablet, you’re still better off with a convertible Ultrabook.

This inability to compromise has always been a problem for Microsoft. Back in 2006 Microsoft gave us a look at the most-used features in Word 2003, and it includes this paragrah:

Beyond the top 10 commands or so, however, the curve flattens out considerably. The percentage difference in usage between the #100 command (“Accept Change”) and the #400 command (“Reset Picture”) is about the same in difference between #1 and #11 (“Change Font Size”) This is what makes creating the new UI challenging — people really do use a lot of the breadth of Office and beyond the top 10 commands there are a lot of different ways of using the product.

Apple would look at that data and say, “let’s cut the bottom 200 commands.” Microsoft looked at it and said, “We’re going to need a bigger ribbon.”2

In short, what Microsoft needs most now is a leader who knows how to make the right compromises. It needs someone who can figure out how to bring the success of the Xbox integrated business (oh look, they make the hardware and the software for that!) to the rest of the company.

Update: As the honorable Mr. Maughan points out, this relates nicely to his post Compromise and glorified ignorance.

---

1. The usual “If you’re not buying the product, you are the product” disclaimer applies. ↩

2. For another example, see Improvements in Windows Explorer. ↩

Nicholas Carr wrote a really interesting article on the dangers of computer automation. In All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines he weaves together stories about airline crashes and Inuit hunters to make salient points like this:

Psychologists have found that when we work with computers, we often fall victim to two cognitive ailments — complacency and bias — that can undercut our performance and lead to mistakes. Automation complacency occurs when a computer lulls us into a false sense of security. Confident that the machine will work flawlessly and handle any problem that crops up, we allow our attention to drift. We become disengaged from our work, and our awareness of what’s going on around us fades. Automation bias occurs when we place too much faith in the accuracy of the information coming through our monitors. Our trust in the software becomes so strong that we ignore or discount other information sources, including our own eyes and ears. When a computer provides incorrect or insufficient data, we remain oblivious to the error.

Carr goes to great lengths to make the argument that the automation of tasks is slowly robbing us of the ability to learn new skills. It is, in some ways, a more nuanced argument than his famous 2008 article Is Google Making Us Stupid? It’s well worth reading — even if you’re skeptical of this argument, it will definitely make you think.