Posts Filed Under ‘Philosophy’
Closing the Feedback Loop · Matt Haughey says Google Buzz doesn't offer an easy way for publishers to see what people are saying about their stuff. He's right; as in Google Reader and Facebook, much of the liking and commenting and sharing that goes on in Buzz happens out of earshot of the creator. I think Buzz is a fine product--a pretty predictable FriendFeed clone, really--but it does suffer from this same broken loop problem that Google Reader creates. Also of interest to other publishers, Matt's related piece on what feedback loops he pays attention to in order to learn how to make better stuff online. · February 10th, 2010, 10 comments
Mark Pilgrim's excellent exposition on the "tinkerer's sunset" (an idea Alex Payne put forth in his iPad piece I linked earlier) got me thinking about the nature of tinkerers, and whether the iPad really represents a sunset for them. The optimist in me thinks it couldn't even if it tried.
First, know that I fundamentally agree with Alex and Mark: the closed nature of the iPad turns me off, and I wouldn't give one to my kid if I were encouraging her to learn about how computers work. But, Apple's rightly betting that most people don't want to know about the inner workings of a computer,* and regardless of the fact that Apple runs the App Store with an iron fist, dedicated hackers have still figured out ways to run whatever software they want on the iPhone/iPod touch. They'll do the same with the iPad, and this led me to muse that the open versus closed debate, which has geeks like me in a tizzy, may be 99% a philosophical discussion. Because while we're all ranting about how closed the iPad will be, the jailbreak community is planning competitions to see who can crack it first. The sun isn't setting on tinkerers; their desire to crack things open intensifies when faced with something that's closed by design. The challenge is part of the appeal.
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I get asked a lot about being a woman in technology and its various niches--social media, open source, entrepreneurship, blogging. Interviewers want to know whether or not things are getting better for women, why there aren't more women here or there, what women should or shouldn't be doing, and what the future holds for those of us in tech who happen to have the XX chromosome. When I get these questions, I never know what to say. Being a woman doesn't make me an expert on gender. I can only draw from my own subjective experiences during what's been a very charmed career. But folks keep asking. So, here's my official line on the topic, which I sent off to an interviewer just this week.
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December Always Gets Me Reflecting · There's a little failure in every success, and a little success in every failure. 'Tis the season to take stock. · December 23rd, 2009
Should You or Shouldn’t You Host Your Own Webapps · One of the smartest people I've ever met, Maciej Cegłowski, says you shouldn't self-host web-based software like WordPress or Fever or eventually, Google Wave, because it requires you to "devote half your life to learning and understanding [server] administration." Go with a hosted service or generate flat HTML files of your blog posts that you upload to your server automatically instead, he says. While Maciej's argument may apply to some (ok, most?) folks, I disagree: When it comes to a project you care passionately about, doing it yourself is much more educational and satisfying (and won't take half your life). Sure, most people should just buy instead of build, but they'll never get something that's exactly what they want and unlike any other. · September 21st, 2009, 13 comments
Debunking the Lone Genius Myth · During their session at OSCON, Google programmers Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick say that it's coders who can collaborate with others, not lone ranger geniuses, who are best at what they do. · August 5th, 2009
At some point along the road I must've become one of these zealous open source nutters, because a debate about the GNU General Public License got stuck in my craw this weekend. The GPL is my license of choice. When you license software under the GPL, you're saying it's free for everyone to use, modify, and redistribute as long as everyone makes their modifications free to use, modify and redistribute under the GPL as well. Developer Daniel Jalkut argues that this "share alike" requirement stifles GPL-licensed code adoption by developers who don't want to (or can't) GPL their work. Jalkut writes:
GPL communities are open and embracing of other GPL developers, but generally off-putting to liberal-license and closed-license developers. [...] Many GPL developers take comfort in the fact that their hard work can’t be quietly taken and incorporated into a commercial product, without any payback of time or money to the original project. But you’re piloting an open source project, and the first step of building a community is to get people in the door. [...] If you operate from the presumption that great developers love to build great projects, the first step in any successful open source project is to get as many great developers in the door as possible.
Jalkut's right about one thing: Great developers do love to build great projects. He may be right about another: Some developers may have to pass on using GPL code because they're not willing or able to share-alike their changes to it. But the one really attractive part of using the GPL that he's missing is this: Great developers love to build projects that more people will use. The GPL is my software license of choice because "share and share alike" spreads the impact of my work. What motivates great individual developers isn't always money, it's ego.
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In an attempt to nail down what psychological aspects factor into "the successful life," researchers have been following 268 Harvard students from the 1940s until now, conducting extensive physical and psychological tests each year.
In a lengthy but fascinating piece, The Atlantic reports on what's known as the Grant Study and its current lead, Dr. George Vaillant. These days Vaillant's speeches about the study's findings focus on the effect of positive emotions on well-being. It's no surprise that love, compassion, gratitude, hope, trust, faith, and forgiveness make us happier people who live longer and healthier lives. Still, negative emotions, like anger, sadness, and distrust can be more attractive psychologically in the short term. Vaillant explains:
Positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.
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I've got my own pie chart of how I want to spend my time, so it was fun to hear that Jim Collins, author of bestselling book Good to Great, also has a similar breakdown, pictured right. The New York Times reports:
That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.
Collins is a whole lot more diligent about tracking his progress than I've ever been, though.
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Yahoo Search as an Alternative to Telling Google Everything · Seems a foregone conclusion that Google's the best search engine on the web, but at this point, there's not that much of a gap between the second-place engine, Yahoo, and the big G. This morning over at Lifehacker I confessed that amidst all my Gmail, Google Voice, Android, Google Docs, and GCal usage, I pointed my web search keyword at Yahoo to break Google's monopoly on my personal data. Resistance isn't futile! · May 20th, 2009, 2 comments
When you love technology, it's natural to lust after the latest gadgets and gear available on the market, even if what you've got already does everything you need. But if you decide not to give in and get that iPhone 3G or netbook, you can feel like you've fallen behind, like you're being cheap, like you're missing out. Truth is, passing on buying the newest model is a decision to brag about.
So I'm thrilled that my pal Anil Dash launched a new site this Earth Day called Last Year's Model, where technophiles can take pride in sticking with the gear they already own, even if it's been around for a year or two (or seven). While I'm guilty of running on the gadget consumer treadmill myself (Android phone and Kindle, anyone?), I'm happy that I've passed on the latest MacBook, a netbook, the Wii, and the iPhone 3G. Join me, will you? Tweet or blog a testimonial to the trusty gadget you passed on upgrading and include the #lastyears hash tag to get included on the site. See Anil's full announcement for more on Last Year's Model.
The hardest part about being a freelancer for me is deciding what jobs are worth taking on, and what I should turn down. I want to do and have it all--but the whole "only 24 hours in a day" thing really throws a wrench into that plan.
Fact is, when you're the boss of you, you've got to be a really good editor: recognize the good gigs and avoid everything else. Over at the FreelanceSwitch blog this morning, I published a piece called How to Craft Your Personal Business Model, in which I describe how I am attempting to do just that. Part of it was designing my ideal work mix, a high-tech pie chart I scribbled on a piece of paper, which you see here.
The work you turn down says more about you as a professional than the work you take on. While I'm still figuring out exactly what I want to be when I grow up, I do know what's important to me, and right now I'm trying to use those values as best I can to guide me to the right people and projects. For more of this kind of touchy-feely career mush, check out the full article.
I love that cartoonist Hugh MacLeod captured the thesis of my entire tech blogging career in 11 words almost two years ago. When people ask me "What does 'smarterware' mean?" I now have a much shorter answer. (via pistachio)
Got a case of the Mondays this morning? Techie Andre Torrez says he loves Mondays because:
It's the start of the week. You get to see what ideas that were so important on Friday stayed important until Monday. [...] Mondays are a fresh start. They're like a reset button for the doldrums of your Wednesday afternoon meetings where two people are going on about something the other eight people in the room don't even understand.
I need to work on an attitude like his. Here's to appreciating the weekly reset button. The full post from Andre: I heart Mondays.
You've got to wonder what makes a guy who builds 3D printers which also ice cupcakes tick. Apparently it's an obsession with getting things done. Maker-of-crazy-cool-things Bre Pettis posts his and Kio Stark's manifesto for the "Cult of Done," 13 edicts about finishing. Here they are, bolded bits mine:
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
Check out the cupcake-icing, 3D-object printing MakerBot here. Here's The Cult of Done Manifesto, with two posters you can download and stick to your wall to stare at while you procrastinate. Image by spatulated.
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