[Petit Fours #451] On deskilling, policy work, and good parties
Hi, all! Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:
#1 I really enjoyed The Age of De-Skilling, an essay in The Atlantic by Kwame Anthony Appiah. “The most troubling prospect of all is what might be called constitutive de-skilling: the erosion of the capacities that make us human in the first place. Judgment, imagination, empathy, the feel for meaning and proportion—these aren’t backups; they’re daily practices. — What might vanish is the tacit, embodied knowledge that underwrites our everyday discernment. If people were to learn to frame questions the way the system prefers them, to choose from its menu of plausible replies, the damage wouldn’t take the form of spectacular failures of judgment so much as a gradual attenuation of our character: shallower conversation, a reduced appetite for ambiguity, a drift toward automatic phrasing where once we would have searched for the right word, the quiet substitution of fluency for understanding.”
#2 Jennifer Mankoff’s short piece on Translating Accessibility Research Through Policy Work is relevant reading for everyone who is thinking about the impact of their research and how engaging in policy work might be a part of it.
#3 NordiCHI 2026 will take place in Vaasa, Finland, on October 3-7, 2026. Calls for submissions to various venues are now out!
#4 November is the time of the year when I have to remind myself to keep socializing. If it’s the same for you, 21 Facts About Throwing Good Parties might give you ideas. I love the notion that parties are a public service.
-A