For the Umarell In Your Life
Further elucidation of my plan to run a “cozy private alpha” of my organizational cartography kit, the essay that got me calling it that, and a final installment from last year's Summer of Protocols.
What Do You Mean By “Marketing”?
A friend ambushes me with a paper that causes me to adjust my mental dictionary with respect to what certain business-critical words mean.
In the Pipe, Five By Five
My first update since indefinitely suspending my activities on Substack. Nice to be back in the saddle.
So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Night
In which I decamp from Substack to Buttondown, and announce a new format for the newsletter.
Computers, Amirite?
Like I said, a rapid-fire strafing of ideas and occurrences. Really.
Inventor's Paradox
Last week in Intertwingler.
Pivot
Now that the Summer of Protocols is in the rear-view mirror, it's time to tee up the rest of the year.
Dog Days
As Summer of Protocols draws to a close, it's time to think about outcomes.
Conference
Preliminary report from IA Conference 2023, Chapter 7 of The Nature of Software coming soon, and Some Personal News™.
Confluence
Big update of many threads coming together: my upcoming Information Architecture Conference talk, a new chapter of The Nature of Software, and what's been eating my brain for the last several weeks.
Privacy by Design
Meditating on what it would take to design information systems that gave third parties only the information they needed to operate.
Canada Gooped
In which our intrepid protagonist really steps in it.
Muskus/Domesticus 🐀
Or: Who Moved My Cheese? Twitter Edition
The Value of Time (and Information)
In which I consider some work that I did and what it would be worth in different contexts, as well as why I did it.
Trajectory
An update on what I've been up to this summer, plus an essay on the public's understanding of digital technology.
Strictly (well, laxly) Business
This issue is work-centric, but I'll be back to bloviating soon enough. I am, however, really excited about The Nature of Software, plus a couple other items.
The Specificity Gradient, and Other Things
A conceptual framework I coined last year shows up again, and apparently I am a YouTuber now. Also: a new, limited-run, subscriber-only newsletter: The Nature of Software.
Forget Passwords!
This is a case study of how I solved a business-slash-UX problem that had been nagging at me for years, by ultimately rolling up my sleeves and writing the code myself.
Well, That Was Unexpected
Not so much a hot take, as a catalyzing event for disgorging a long-chewed rumination about what happens when Twitter irrevocably starts to suck.
A Very Special Episode
You know, I had been thinking I might be due for a clip show. With the recent spike in subscribers, let's have a recap to see what you've been missing.
At Any Given Moment in a Process
Last week, the architect Christopher Alexander passed away. Christopher Alexander at the Julian Street Inn, taken by Richard Morgenstein. A polarizing figure...
Radical Interoperability is a Political Agenda
First newsletter of the year; quite a bit has happened in the world since I wrote the last one. I wrote a few thousand words on those subject(s) and decided...
Back Just In Time To Close Out the Year
Been a while, internet! This is my first newsletter since May 12. Let’s see, where to begin… For the bulk of the last three and a half months, I have...
The Nerden of Dorking Paths
The thing about a two-week cadence on the internet is that contemporaneous material comes and goes, and by the time you’re ready to write again, all the...
Le Petit Prince
I was reminded earlier last week about something John Ralston Saul said (and subsequently wrote) regarding mythology: that mythology is important because it...
Coasean Inversion
I mentioned a couple missives ago that I had begun to sniff around the possibility of an ordinary jay-oh-bee, a decision largely driven by transaction costs....
No Stuck Boat Content, I Promise
My latest toy is coming along A couple newsletters ago I wrote about how my brother is a full-time actor, and how he might audition up to fifteen times a...
Schrödinger's Cloud
Raining on your parade Microsoft’s recent Exchange Server vulnerability makes SolarWinds look small by comparison. The kitchen-sink email/calendar/task...
Around Paying for (and Charging for) Content
A hypothetical “phase space” in which information services can exist, from low/unknown perceived value to high, and from content-centric to author-centric. I...
Place, Space, Time
Duct tape is evidence of failure e-Friend Dan Hon released a kraken of a Twitter thread criticizing that New York Times article about an AirBnB developer who...
What a Difference a Week Makes
The orange menace has finally been silenced. It is actually uncanny just how normal everything feels. I mean, sure, I could and did ignore him, but I found...
How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?
Quickies: Derrick Schultz is a generative artist who you should follow on Instagram. Every year he does a run of Valentine’s Day cards; this time around he’s...
Fact-Checking is Table Stakes
Since I am neither a citizen nor resident of the United States, I feel like I don’t have much of a place commenting on the events of the first week of...
Setting the Tone for an Anti-Platform
It has long been understood that insinuating oneself between people and what they want, while skimming off a piece of the action, is remarkably good...
Confluence: Ethics and Attention
I recently finished Tim Hwang’s mercifully slim Subprime Attention Crisis. Its argument is that through blocking software, click fraud, and overall...
Eye of Newt and Stack of Sub
Why I am annoyed Email is a big step backward in a lot of ways from RSS✱, both technically, and in terms of relationships. ✱ When I write RSS I mean all Web...