Linknote — — 128 words

Technology

Future historians probably won’t understand our internet, and that’s OK

The internet once promised to offer archivists an unprecedented opportunity to record and track our era. But with social media silos offering “pervasive, unique, personalized, non-repeatable” experiences, it is proving increasingly difficult to preserve our internet.

Every major social-networking service uses opaque algorithms to shape what data people see. Why does Facebook show you this story and not that one? No one knows, possibly not even the company’s engineers. Outsiders know basically nothing about the specific choices these algorithms make. Journalists and scholars have built up some inferences about the general features of these systems, but our understanding is severely limited. So, even if the LOC has the database of tweets, they still wouldn’t have Twitter.

Linknote — — 64 words

Technology

Google Maps’s moat

A brilliant analysis of recent improvements to Google Maps, and why Google is so far ahead of Apple.

Just two years after it started adding them, Google already had the majority of buildings in the US. And now after five years, it has my rural hometown — an area it still hasn’t Street View’d (after 10+ years of Street View).

Linknote — — 170 words

Architecture — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Sticks in the ground for public services

You know I love a bit of brutalism. Well here, Ben Holliday draws a comparison between civic architecture of the mid-20th century, and modern-day digital local services.

Many of these buildings are now disused or in different states of disrepair. It’s an important reminder. The fact is, no matter how bold you set out to be. No matter how big or successfully your original statement of intent, eventually the roof will start to leak.

Buildings, just like ideas, need maintenance. They fall into disrepair over time.

I have written a few times before about the parallels I see between architecture and digital services. It’s well worth learning the lessons from the past and applying them to our own projects.

Linknote — — 130 words

Accessibility — Technology

Talking to Léonie Watson about computer vision and blindness

Peter Gasston interviewed Léonie Watson, an accessibility consultant who is blind. In this extract, they discuss computer vision — technologies that can extract information from photos and videos using machine learning. It sounds like massively promising technology.

I was sitting in a hotel having breakfast not long ago and just held up my phone and took a quick snapshot and it told me I was sitting opposite a window, and told me what it could see out the window; and that’s just information I would never have had unless I’d happened to sort of ask whoever I was with to describe it to me. But having that ability to just do that independently is really quite remarkable.

Linknote — — 65 words

Technology

Facebook’s algorithm hijacked this $8 billion company to sell cat blindfolds

Online retailer Wish was developing a cult following for its incredibly bizarre Facebook ads. Among the products displayed to users: cat blindfolds, cocaine sweatshirts and “plastic tongue things”.

It’s yet another unforseen consequence of algorithms driving everything, and yet another indication that companies desperately need to stop giving so much weight to clicks alone.

Linknote — — 119 words

Technology

This changes everything: Gutenberg is good now

I have only been keeping half an eye on the controversy surrounding the project to re-work the WordPress post editing experience, Gutenberg. Early versions of the new design were widely panned by the WordPress community. But according to this article, Gutenberg has turned a corner.

Having been a WordPress user since 2004, I am probably not the target audience for the change, and nor are most of the people complaining. WordPress’s challenge is to reach the people who are currently looking to Squarespace or Wix.

Given that WordPress powers 28% of all websites, I’m interested to find out how such a fundamental change is going to be communicated to its huge number of users.

Linknote — — 81 words

Culture — Digital

I made my shed the top rated restaurant on TripAdvisor

Brilliantly entertaining article by someone who managed to game TripAdvisor into ranking his fake establishment as the number one restaurant in London.

When he staged a deliberately-awful opening night, some of the patrons asked to come again.

The Shed at Dulwich has suddenly become appealing. How?

I realise what it is: the appointments, lack of address and general exclusivity of this place is so alluring that people can’t see sense.

Linknote — — 160 words

Human-centred approaches — Media — Technology

The media perspective on burger emoji: An unexpected analysis

The burger emoji: A first-hand analysis of the media coverage

Media analyst Thomas Baekdal unexpectedly went viral last month when he tweeted about the inconsistencies between the burger emojis for Apple and Google. He has published two articles about it. The first examines why his tweet went viral. The second investigates how the media reacted.

The analysis paints a rather negative picture of the media.

…look at the very familiar pattern of the stories posted by the media. They are all focusing on Google’s CEO saying he will do something.

Think about all the other stories that journalists cover on a regular basis. How many of those have the same inherent problem of being antagonistically focused, with a scandal-first lens regardless if the underlying topic is politics, business, or general human interest?

For what it’s worth, of course the cheese should be on top.

(I have written before about ambiguous emojis.)

Linknote — — 88 words

Digital — Human-centred approaches

Designers, it’s time to move slowly and fix things

Another reflection on how the culture of tech and design probably needs to change, this time from Basecamp product designer Jonas Downey.

Designers and programmers are great at inventing software… Unfortunately we’re not nearly as obsessed with what happens after that, when people integrate our products into the real world. They use our stuff and it takes on a life of its own. Then we move on to making the next thing. We’re builders, not sociologists.

Linknote — — 119 words

Economics — Technology

Wealth inequality is even worse in reputation economies

Cory Doctorow on how reputation economies (like the rating system satirised in the Black Mirror episode Nosedive) have a series of undesirable effects.

…reputation is useless as a hedge against the real nightmare of a setup like Ebay: the long con. It doesn’t cost much, nor does it take much work, to build up sleeper identities on Ebay, fake storefronts that sell un­remarkable goods at reasonable prices, earning A+++ GREAT SELLER tickmarks, even for years, until one day, that account lists a bunch of high-value items on the service, pockets the buyers’ funds, and walks off.

Reputation works badly and fails badly – it’s a lose-lose situation all around.