“[C]reating or hacking something requires much more than manipulating code, and much of those other elements are greatly enriched by the presence of people based in the arts. You need to know what you’re hacking, and why — the context of your project, the guiding vision, the overall strategic plan. You need to conduct research on the project’s viability, its scope and functions, your capacity to make it happen. You need to write and edit content and make your project visually accessible. You need to figure out how you are going to get people to use your project — not just by advertising, but by considering factors such as accessibility, user experience, even the assumptions made by your project about its users’ needs. These are skills that people in the arts can bring to tech teams, products and the industry overall.”

— Let’s Lose The Arts/Tech False Dichotomy Already — Medium

An important read, especially in regard to the gendered divided between arts creative work and technology work. For an example of this in practice, just look at the stereotypes of “front-end” versus “back-end” developers. I’m also pleased to see Tiara take the arts side to the carpet for their reactions as well. The world needs more than programmers.

All across the Valley, the majority of big start-ups are actually glorified distribution companies that are trying, in some sense, to copy what Domino’s Pizza mastered in the 1980s when it delivered a hot pie to your door in 30 minutes or less. Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, Luxe, Amazon Fresh, Google Express, TaskRabbit, Postmates, Instacart, SpoonRocket, Caviar, DoorDash, Munchery, Sprig, Washio, and Shyp, among others, are really just using algorithms to deliver things, or services, to places as quickly as possible. Or maybe it’s simpler than that. As one technologist overheard and posted on Twitter, “SF tech culture is focused on solving one problem: What is my mother no longer doing for me?”

— Is Silicon Valley in Another Tech Bubble? | Vanity Fair

Nick Bilton nails the problems in the Valley, and this is just one of a whole holy host of quotable sections. That said, Dave Pell is on to something too, if you need a TL;DR version.

“Ultimately, the technology shows you a problem, but not how to deal with it afterwards, or prepare you for it. It attempts to nudge you into behaviors without know what behaviors it is nudging you out of. As designers, we know how we’d like our designed object to work, that you, or your user, are saved in the nick of time, or that you can have a good laugh about the STI that has been revealed afterwards, but we know that just isn’t the case.”

— “Means Well” Technology and the Internet of Good Intentions — Thingclash

Food for thought on the disconnect between the technology world and the real world.

“When you learn to write you are taught that a deep understanding of your audience is essential to effective communication. On the internet, though, you are often shouting to your intended listeners as they stand in a thick, noisy crowd. You may be appealing directly to their interests and ambitions, but if their neighbor disagrees, you could still face pushback, complaints or even abuse. The potential for criticism from unexpected parties is, on the whole, positive – a boot camp in radical empathy, one that makes it ever more difficult to hide behind provincialism as an excuse for insensitivity. But for many, it’s disorienting.”

— Can the internet actually be an empathy boot camp? – Jess Zimmerman

The first step towards empathy is to slow down and think before you hit post. We’re all still figuring out how to live in a world where everyone has megaphones, but Jess is pointing towards a good way to manage it.

[H]ow many of us are asked to design things that have the potential of causing harm to the people who come into contact with our work? How many of us will work on privacy settings for large social networks at some point? Will we think of how those settings affect those who interact with them? How many of us will design user interfaces for drop cams? Will we think of the privacy violations they might cause? How many of us will design products that put people in strangers’ cars? Will we consider those passengers’ safety as we design our solution? And will we see it as our responsibility to make sure these products are as safe as possible?

And if we come to the conclusion that these products cannot be made safe, how many of us will see it as our responsibility to raise our hands and say “I’m not making this.”

— In Praise of the AK-47 — Dear Design Student — Medium

All of us who make things, words, websites, products, we’re responsible for what we make and the effects they have—intended and unintended. The sooner we learn this, the sooner we focus on the people who use what we make over the profit we can make, the better the world will be.