Technology – Page 12 – Chris Koerner

Edward Snowden AMA on Reddit

How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn’t to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where — if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen — we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new — and permanent — basis.\

Traitor and Patriot¹ Edward Snowden, along with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald hosted an AMA over on Reddit today. Interesting insights and I’m guardedly optimistic that we’re making progress on privacy and security matters. Both at the personal and national levels.

Ive Got Some Feedback

Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.”

This incredibly in-depth piece on Jonny Ive, the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple, reminds me a lot of the lessons and insights learned from Mike Monterio’s book Design is a Job.

To do good design work is to relish in good feedback. Don’t think designers or developers want you to say, “I like it!” when you really don’t. We all need to be honest – brutally and politely so – with one another to make better design.

Silence in Open Source Projects

If you contribute to open source projects, or are the sole creator of an open source project, you need to keep talking about that status of what you’re working on. Never stop.

Silence will deter people. Even if your code is super stable. Even if all features have been added. If I see that the last update on your blog/twitter/etc. was a year ago, I’ll assume the project is not actively maintained. That you’ve moved on. That OS updates and/or browser updates will render upon me issues and bugs that will never be addressed. That I should find something else to use.

In a world where OS updates are yearly and mobile apps are updated without interaction, it’s maddening to see open source projects – good, solid, useful projects – go into a sort of hermit state.

Quicksilver went through a period where it wasn’t actively being developed. Now that it’s seen some love, updates are frequent and communication is constant. I know that it’s a living project and something that is being worked on. I can rely on it and treat it as something that is solid and tactile – not infirm or fragile. A feeling I often felt during the ‘dark times’ where it lacked leadership.

Most recently I’ve seen this with the Sequel Pro application. An application I love and use frequently². Sequel Pro hasn’t updated in over a year ³. Devs say it’s still active, but aren’t communicating that.

I’m not advocating for point release updates just for the sake of appearance. I’m advocating for putting effort into your communication.

If you’re part of an open source project that is actively being developed – even by just a few contributors – make sure it is kept alive. Make sure new users, and existing users returning to see what’s new, know the status of things. Clearly and plainly. If the project is still active, communicate that. If the project is done and mothballed – let us know that as well.

The result is more people using your thing. More people making it better. That’s worth your time.

A Teenager ≠ All Teenagers

View at Medium.com

This article from Andrew Watts, a 19-year-old student at the University of Austin, contains some interesting insights on teenage usage of social media. He speaks from a particular perspective⁴ and provides some unique thoughts on the various networks in use.

Did you know the first use of the phrase “teenager” to describe a group of people was in 1944? That’s only 60 years ago.

Shortly after reading Andrew’s post, I noticed that danah boyd wrote a great response to Andrew’s post. Her biggest insight ⁵ is that we mustn’t forget that Andrew doesn’t speak for all teenagers.

Andrew is very visible about where he stands. He’s very clear about his passion for technology (and his love of blogging on Medium should be a big ole hint to anyone who missed his byline). He’s also a college student and talks about his peers as being obviously on path to college. But as readers, let’s not forget that only about half of US 19-year-olds are in college.

If you work with young people and are interested in understanding the complex nature of how they approach the same tools you may use (like Facebook, Twitter) then read both. Andrew provides insight into one perspective of social media usage and danah reminds us to keep the keel even. Let me know what you think with a comment below.

Ethan Hawke on Good Sci-Fi

And for that matter, look at the moral conundrums that GATTACA asked – which are right here. To what extent do we really want to homogenize ourselves, when it’s our uniqueness that makes us special – when so many of us, when given the option, would eliminate that? For example – if they can discover dyslexia in the embryo, and get rid of it, many people would choose to do that. And we’d lose Albert Einstein, John Lennon, and my daughter.

Actor Ethan Hawke always puts on a good AMA.