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I strongly agree with Cal on this. I write software and generally spend much of my time focusing on how to better design digital technologies of various kinds.
by adpoe 10y ago
I strongly agree with Cal on this. I write software and generally spend much of my time focusing on how to better design digital technologies of various kinds.
But ultimately, I think that good design is typically subtractive, not additive. The best digital products improve our lives--our lives in the physical world--while sucking up as little of our attention, mental effort, and personal information as possible.
I think it's only a matter of time before we see these attitudes become more prevalent (precisely because they are controversial/reactionary), and the general design ethos of Silicon Valley shifts as a result.
One of the key tensions of the near future may be between minimalism and maximalism in this way: should we throw more and more computation power at every single "problem", brute-forcing a solution to each for its own sake? Or should we optimize, and find the smallest, least intrusive, most elegant and simplest solution? I know which one sounds better to me. But will that drive business revenue? We'll see.
Perhaps more importantly though, at a certain point--by creating so much digital detritus and complexity, our brute-force solutions and ever-present computation create a new set of problems (such as the need to filter information aggressively to get any useful value from it--which is what minimalism is all about). So maybe this is just the realization of that. We need a new layer on top of the computation infrastructure to __reduce__, to complete our maximalist designs. Either way, interesting.
- SmkyMt 10y ago"The best digital products improve our lives..." I'd like to be as optimistic as you. But actually (sadly?) this already happens. Those who want to "improve" their lives at profit-from-advertising are running A-B tests to evaluate the "best"-ness of their design/development based on clicks, ad revenue, conversions etc. Those who wish to promote a political or religious viewpoint ...same. You may not ever want to have your life "improved" in the way I choose to "improve" mine. There will be some digital technologies that leave the Facebook crowd feeling that they have better lives and others that do so for more niche markets (HN, anyone?).
- dominotw 10y ago>e. The best digital products improve our lives--our lives in the physical world--while sucking up as little of our attention, So glad the 'wearables revolution' is now relegated to dusty bottom shelves of target. Next on the chopping block is 'internet of shit', utility drones.
- ddrmaxgt37 10y agoSep Kamvar (MIT Media Lab) has similar thoughts on what he calls self limiting technology. Instead of technology being useful initially, but then embedding itself and changing the way we live, technology could just solve the problem it sets out to solve and then just recede away. He gave online dating as an example.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago> The best digital products improve our lives ... The trouble is, vanishingly few current products are designed to improve our lives first. We became the product existing to provide more data. So we ended up with social networks that show us what produces most ad views not what's most helpful to network your friends and relatives. We've got phone "apps" that are just thin clients and give us todo apps that can't trigger an alarm unless it's got 4G. I've ended up with an eclectic, almost intentionally obsolete, version of digital minimalism. I use old desktop apps, command line, text editors and old widgets. There's barely a web 2 app installed on phone or laptop, and browser visits social media less than once a month. Back to the 90s? I'll visit here, reddit and one or two others for an hour a day. I need the net far less than 5 or 10 years ago unless I'm working, well researching. The most interesting thing about the article, some of my tech friends, and where I've ended up is the number of techies who are starting to reject much of what we built!
- imagist 10y ago> The trouble is, vanishingly few current products are designed to improve our lives first. We became the product existing to provide more data. This, more than anything, is why I refuse to view ads and jealously guard my data.