how about plain text? Imagine writing and presentation software where all you do is think about what you want to say.

Software that provides the illusion and sensation that you’re getting stuff done without actually getting much done is a great enterprise sale.

Quoting Luciano Floridi:

In AI, the outcome matters, not whether the agent or its behaviour is intelligent. Thus, AI is not about reproducing any kind of biological intelligence. It is about doing without it.

Reminds me of the quote oft attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.Then life will find its very existence from the arts.

Hopefully we won’t soon be saying:

At first, AI imitates biological life. Then biological life will imitate AI. Then biological life will find its very existence from AI.

how can a product be joyful if the process was a drag?

How indeed.

Thinking is hard, slow and painful...you need to practice thought to get better at it. But we tend to avoid hard, slow things.

The fear:

I fear that I will receive even more emails that say nothing, even more PowerPoint presentations without story....What seems threatening about AI is that it further clutters the world...Kitsch pretends to be what it is not. I don’t want to waste my time trying to give sense to carelessly generated nonsense that never had any.

The hope:

we become much more refined and attentive in the exchange of information

AI is not coming good design:

I had and have no fear [of AI putting me out of work]. Design requires thought; it is time-consuming and difficult. AI does not think, it computes.

bad images devalue the work you’ve put into your writing.

We lose interest as soon as we realize that what we read never had any intended meaning.

If you believe in the idea that human beings are endowed with a kind of intrisic value that makes us — our “intelligence” — different, than part of what makes writing valuable is the human being who wrote it, not the probability machine that made a word smoothie.

Why should I care on this side when no one cares on the other side?

Also, I like this economic parallel of inflation hitting the digital world:

Technically, crisp, well-made videos are expensive. They take a lot of time. They require a lot of people in the creation process. They cost a lot to produce. They look expensive. The outlook of being able to make technically high-quality videos in just a few seconds is attractive. But foreseeably, the very same inflation that has hit AI images will hit AI video...And then they will start to devalue what is connected to it.

[ai images and video are] like everything cheap and easy, they are losing their creative and economic value at the same pace as they have become ubiquitous

Computer-generated videos impress at first sight, but soon they will follow the development of computer-generated text and images and carry close to zero stylistic, economic, or creative value until they become a liability and will cost more than they add, as they drag everything around them down.

The issue with saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is it sets up a false battle between words and images...

Letting images and pictures compete for supremacy reduces the complex relationship between images and words into a direct, quantifiable comparison.

Ok, sold. I need to stop using that phrase. One is not better than the other. It’s not an either/or. They both have roles to play, strengths and weaknesses, and they reinforce each other.

While images can instantly evoke feelings or set a scene, they lack the specificity and explanatory power that words can provide. While words can be precise and informative, they might not capture the immediacy or emotional resonance that a well-chosen image can deliver.

Instead of pitching images and text against each other, we need to learn when to use which, and how to use both images and words to strengthen each other...

Images and words are different forms of language. One can express that which the other cannot.

To summarize:

The most powerful combination of text and image happens when the text says about the image what you can’t see at first sight, and when the image renders what is hard to imagine.

Do your images add meaning? Or are they merely decorative?

Ironically, the phrase “an image is worth a thousand words” is conveyed via words and not an image.

AI images make your audience think: “If they use cheap AI for images, they probably use it for the rest, too.” It raises questions about the authenticity of your content

Yeah, not gonna lie, I make these judgements.

The question is: Do you always need an image? The use of images shouldn’t be an unconditional “always.” Instead, it should be a deliberate choice, driven by the specific needs and objectives of your content.

Don’t depend on images to do your job of writing.

A writing app that thinks for you is a robot that does your jogging.

The world is full of noise because we are not in control of our information technology but the other way around…Writing is rewriting and rewriting until the thought becomes clear. AI may help here and there pointing you to unclear elements, but if AI writes for you, you will stop thinking.

AI will have eaten all our hobbies long before it fired us from our job

AI acts and feels like cancer. It grows uncontrolled out of our organic knowledge, and it grows where that organic knowledge already has developed some carcinogenic tissue.

How are you human if you leave understanding reading, thinking, writing, caring, and loving to a processor?

Should I use emojis in my writing?

What and how you write is more important than how you decorate it.

I agree! The thing is, you probably already know the answer as to whether you should use them.

Do you use your emoji in a meaningful way, beyond measurability, clickability, usability and SEO? Or are you just making noise? Most of the time, you can find the answer without Google Analytics, eye trackers, CT, or lie detectors.

And while this refers to use of emojis, I feel the same way about social images these days:

[If] you do what everyone does, you do not stand out. Design is hard to measure. You can count seconds, clicks, and dollars. Meaning, beauty, love, and trust do not translate well into percentages.

Don’t use emoji when you don’t really have a meaning or purpose for it.

Do not hope the reader will figure out what you haven’t thought through

While using emoji has its place, unfortunately the common case seems to be:

Spread mechanically and without much thought, to add some color to an otherwise dull text, [emojis] just decorate boredom.

Lastly, I love this great point on why we write:

Finding verbal clarity on a subject of which one had only vague feelings, seeing clearly expressed what was only in the back of one’s mind, is one of the chief pleasures of reading good writing.

Imagine you run a supermarket that offers fresh products only. A marketing message for this business may sound like “Fresh products every day.” Is it catchy? Probably no.

How can we make it look more interesting with the power of copywriting? — “We leave nothing for tomorrow.”

Why is the second option much more interesting and creative? — It makes you think! It creates a micro-conversation inside of your customer’s head: “Why don’t they leave anything for tomorrow? — Because they bring fresh product every day, and what’s left at the end of the day is probably donated to poor people”.

I marvel in jealousy at people who can write purposefully like this.

• No one came back from YouTube feeling fresh and energized.
• No one peeled out motivated and happy after two hours of scrolling through Instagram.
• No one ever got inspired to finish things up after a Netflix Bonanza.

And then this, which is what I’ve tried to voice to people who tell me they loved the book “Atomic Habits” (which I didn’t because it felt like an argument for body/mind hacking, i.e. “you can’t change, you gotta trick yourself into doing good things”):

Yes, your body is constantly playing tricks on you. Yes, it fools you into believing what isn’t the case. It blinds you from seeing what is. And it directs you to get fast rewards.

Your reward system is getting hacked, and you are being made a slave of yourself…Attributing your delays to some unalterable biochemical processes and giving them scientific names will make your delaying seem scientifically inevitable.

Yeah, but really, a science is one perspective on the world. Biology, physics, chemistry…each is just one way to look at and describe reality. Don’t let your inner neuroscientist discourage the unmeasurable, unweighable, uncountable free philosophical self inside you.

You are more than the sum of your cells.

the tech industry prefers the word “ethics” over morals

Why? Because:

“Ethics” is nice. Morals are uncomfortable.
“Ethics” is less binding. They feel more abstract, neutral, less scary, less obligatory. Morals command.
“Ethics” is abstract. Morals are concrete.

Overall, a bit rambling in spots but had some interesting insights I think.

Following on the heels the previous tweet, there’s this piece from the ever insightful folks over at ia.net. Here are a few of the pieces that stood out to me.

Not the master designer but the user is the arbitrator of good design.

The world was sucked into a medium that allowed measuring the performance of forty-one shades of blue. And thus the notion of good and bad design radically changed. Design used to be about sensitivity, beauty, and taste. Today, design is about what engages users and grows profits.

The key performance indicator for design has changed from beauty to profit. Measuring design has transformed a handicraft into an engineering job. The user is king. The user decides what is good and what is bad design

We are also beginning to realize eliminating what is not measurable may come at an unmeasurable cost.

How much of what us human is truly measurable and verifiable?

How do we measure friendship? By the number of replies per month? By the length of replies? With computer linguistics? How do we measure usefulness? Lots of page views? Few page views? Stickiness? Number of Subscriptions? How do we measure trust? By the number of likes? Retweets? Comments? How do we measure truth?

However, out of experience, we know those good things are rare, that quality always comes at a price and that the price tag of quality grows exponentially.

We also know that what is truly good is somehow beautiful, and what is truly beautiful is somehow good. It’s not a direct relationship, it’s a deeper connection.

My comment: Silicon Valley’s law: all software problems will be resolved with more software

A fourth of July soliloquy:

As China starts outdoing us economically, technically and strategically, we are turning Chinese, slowly losing the spiritual, cultural and political texture that made us different....Silicon Valley spies on us like the Chinese Government—and in many ways they see China as their role model. They admire entrepreneurs that don’t sleep, don’t see their children, don’t care about such touch-me-feel-me nonsense like the truth, justice, beauty or how others feel.

So what makes the West unique? The author suggests the following 16 items:

1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent
2. That all power is vested in the people
3. That government is instituted for the common benefit
4. That no man is entitled to exclusive privileges
5. That legislative executive should be separate and distinct from the judicative;
6. That elections ought to be free
7. That all power without consent of the representatives of the people is injurious
8. That in prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation
9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted
10. That general warrants are grievous and oppressive
11. That the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other
12. That the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty
13. That a well regulated militia is the proper defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty
14. That the people have a right to uniform government
15. That no free government can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue
16. That religion can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence

And what's so special about these? They are ideas whose impact cannot be directly measured, which is why perhaps in our day they go undervalued:

The West has 16 things to lose [which cannot] be touched, bought or expressed in numbers. It’s not the GDP, it’s not the number of STEM graduates, it’s not the top positions in the charts of the biggest banks. What we can hope is that the bureaucrats and technocrats continue to undervalue how powerful the unmeasurable is. These 16 ideas have survived Napoleon, ended First World War and won against the Nazis. They have survived the Khmer and they have survived Stalinism. Happy fourth of July.

I thought the author’s comment here on Twitter’s response to banning spam bots (whereas Facebook turned to tuning their algorithms so as to not “censor”) was interesting, i.e. “you have the power to shape your own destiny”:

Here is a heavy dose of practical philosophy for you: You know who decides? Those who take responsibility. And those who decide and take responsibility shape their destiny. For those who wait and see other people will decide. This is a moment where Twitter can make precious ground over a seemingly invincible Facebook.

The article is an interesting look at UI design in an automated age. It argues we should clearly differentiate humans and bots in user interfaces, a line which, right now, is mentally taxing at the least and impossible at the most:

Programming an army of bots in a system without checks and balances is economically interesting. It happens because it is cheap.

The UI mockups are interesting. Personally, I would love something like this.

A well-articulated set of arguments for why the folks at IA ship their plain text editor with only a monospaced font:

In contrast to proportional fonts that communicate “this is almost done” monospace fonts suggest “this text is work in progress.” It is the more honest typographic choice for a text that is not ready to publish...The typographic rawness of a monospace font tells the writer: “This is not about how it looks, but what it says. Say what you mean and worry about the style later.” Proportional fonts suggest “This is as good as done and stand in an intimidating contrast to a raw draft.”

I wonder if that’s why there’s so many bugs in software: we’re subconsciously believing it’s always a work in progress? Well, the folks at IA address the programmers and monospaced fonts later:

Programmers use monospaced fonts for their indentation and because it allows them to spot typos. In a perfectly regular horizontal and vertical raster, letters and words become easily discernible

But is there a balance between a proportional font and a monospaced one?

This year, again, we set out exploring our own writing font. We started from scratch, moved from proportional to monospace to three spaces and ended up with duospace...Progressively, we came to realize that the right question is how to make a proportional font look like a monospace, but how many exceptions you allow until you lose the benefits of a sturdy monospace.

And here’s the why behind exploring duospace:

The advantage over proportional fonts is that you keep all benefits of the monospace: the draft like look, the discernability of words and letters, and the right pace for writing. Meanwhile, you eliminate the downside stemming from mechanical restrictions that do not apply to screen fonts.

Honesty, I’d like to see more blog posts like this. These kinds of observations (and their implications) get brushed over too frequently. In my opinion, the author is trivially breezing over a topic that could results in the ultimate regret at the end of his life:

As a so-called HCI (Human Computer Interaction) designer, I know that using a computer I am, in fact, communicating with a computer. I communicate with computers all day long. I know that, most of the time, I talk to something that has no body, no feelings, and no understanding...I mostly use the computer as a tool to talk to other humans. I structure interfaces and write text that I share with other humans. I communicate more with computers than with my kids. I caress my iPhone more often than my kids. This is a bit sad. Maybe it’s very sad. But, hey, most people spend more time at work than with the family! Spending time with my computers, I support my family. And, hey, eventually, my words and designs will reach other human beings. I know that what I do on my computers will be felt by humans in some way. I fear that on my death bed I might regret these words as much as what they try to deny. But, hey… There is a difference between communicating through computers and communicating with computers.

He also touches on that nagging concern many of us in tech have that what you do becomes worthless in a matter of years months:

Spending time with computers we still risk that all the energy we invested in communicating with them disappears into that little black electric holes that used to eat our Word documents. When we talk to computers, we risk dying a little, as we lose time to the possibility that all our energy turns to zeroes.

Conclusion:

Just pay attention to not pour half your life into the digital void.

Great analogy:

One of the first lessons you learn as a young traveler is when you go to a faraway country: avoid the people that call you on the street. “Massage?” “Hungry?” “Need a guide?” Only noobs follow the hustlers. You find a quiet spot and research where to go. Then you go there and then go further. Same thing when you travel on the Web. Don’t get lured in. Find a quiet spot and research and then go there. And then go further...Things pushed in our stream through an algorithm tailored to our weakness are the digital equivalent of the calls that try to lure you in when you walking down a street in Bangkok.

Also, I thought this was a rather interesting (and funny) observation on how younguns view URLs. Apparently, this was a conversation that happened:

11-year-old: “What is this strange stuff on the Milk package?”
Dad: “This strange stuff is a URL.”
11-year-old “What does it say?”
Dad: “It’s an Internet address.”
11-year-old “Address of what?”
Dad: “Of a Website. It’s used in the browser—you put it in that field on top and then you go to a Website.”
11-year-old “What is the browser?“

The author’s observation on this conversation is that:

The browser now is just another app...Apps bring him there sometimes. To a chatting teen, the address bar is a cousin of the terminal.