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I was kinda surprised that the phrase "long tail" didn't come up in the OP. I think that the author's point can be well summed up as "the open web protects the

by euske 6y ago

I was kinda surprised that the phrase "long tail" didn't come up in the OP. I think that the author's point can be well summed up as "the open web protects the long tail / diversity". After all, why diversity is good for the society overall is a tricky question to answer.

fireattack 6y ago
>After all, why diversity is good for the society overall is a tricky question to answer. Indeed. There are plenty of cultures seem to value "homogeneity" over diversity (at least by Western's world standard).
- Technically 6y ago
  This sounds like it's true, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that "western culture" is particularly concerned with "diversity" at all (outside of PR culture), or that other such "homogenous" cultures have significantly less tolerance for "diversity". If someone is arguing for diversity in good faith they can explain exactly what kind of diversity they're arguing for and why. Japan, for instance, appears culturally homogenous only until you compare culture across economic classes; only a very shallow definition of diversity would fail to capture this. In fact, that's true for many societies. The quirk of america is that we've internalized the diversity of the working class as uniquely american, class be damned, even if that's trivially a false characterization of the upper class. American media is not careful about how they use the word, and does not call out substance-less uses of it, so it's become an easy target for mocking lack of substance in political and cultural discussions.
Barrin92 6y ago
because diversity is an information discovery mechanism. More (or different) eyes see more. Diversity makes it so that your company figures out that the soap dispenser doesn't recognise dark skinned people in development, not when it already lands on the store shelf.
abhinavsharma 6y ago
This phrase was definitely in the back of my mind while writing this and something I use in everyday conversation. I just hesitated to use it because its one of those terms that's very common in search but has mixed usage levels outside search/ml/stats/data people, and I wanted to focus this post primarily on the UX aspect.

by euske 6y ago

fireattack 6y ago

>After all, why diversity is good for the society overall is a tricky question to answer. Indeed. There are plenty of cultures seem to value "homogeneity" over diversity (at least by Western's world standard).

Technically 6y ago
This sounds like it's true, but I haven't seen convincing evidence that "western culture" is particularly concerned with "diversity" at all (outside of PR culture), or that other such "homogenous" cultures have significantly less tolerance for "diversity". If someone is arguing for diversity in good faith they can explain exactly what kind of diversity they're arguing for and why. Japan, for instance, appears culturally homogenous only until you compare culture across economic classes; only a very shallow definition of diversity would fail to capture this. In fact, that's true for many societies. The quirk of america is that we've internalized the diversity of the working class as uniquely american, class be damned, even if that's trivially a false characterization of the upper class. American media is not careful about how they use the word, and does not call out substance-less uses of it, so it's become an easy target for mocking lack of substance in political and cultural discussions.

Barrin92 6y ago

because diversity is an information discovery mechanism. More (or different) eyes see more. Diversity makes it so that your company figures out that the soap dispenser doesn't recognise dark skinned people in development, not when it already lands on the store shelf.

abhinavsharma 6y ago

This phrase was definitely in the back of my mind while writing this and something I use in everyday conversation. I just hesitated to use it because its one of those terms that's very common in search but has mixed usage levels outside search/ml/stats/data people, and I wanted to focus this post primarily on the UX aspect.