- Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto (Hieroglyph)
- Plans for $400-billion new city in the American desert unveiled (CNN Style)
- Jeff Bezos and the New Pharaohs (Singularity Weekly)
- Comments are on
- Three different types of post each week
- Everyone gets access at the same time
- Do you have any questions for me to answer in tomorrow's post?
- Would you consider becoming a supporter of Thought Shrapnel?
- Comments are on
- Three different types of post each week
- Everyone gets access at the same time
- Do you have any questions for me to answer in tomorrow's post?
- Would you consider becoming a supporter of Thought Shrapnel?
Building a system for success, without the glitches
Wise words from Seth Godin. It’s a twist on the advice to stop doing things that maybe used to work but don’t any more. The ‘glitch’ he’s talking about here isn’t just in terms of what might not be working for you or your organisation, but for society and humanity as a whole.
Many moths are attracted to light. That works fine when it’s a bright moon and an open field, but not so well for the moths if the light was set up as a bug trap.Source: Finding the glitch | Seth’s BlogProcessionary caterpillars follow the one in front until their destination, even if they’re arranged in a circle, leading them to march until exhaustion.
It might be that you have built a system for your success that works much of the time, but there’s a glitch in it that lets you down. Or it might be that we live in a culture that creates wealth and possibility, but glitches when it fails to provide opportunity to others or leaves a mess in our front yards.
Image: DALL-E 3
What's good for us is also good for the planet
I came across this via Dense Discovery, which is one of a number of additional newsletters to which I would recommend Thought Shrapnel readers subscribe.
In this article, Erin Remblance shows how modern lifestyles, particularly in wealthy nations, have led to a loss of human connection and an increase in mental health issues. She suggests that the shift from community-oriented activities to individualistic, consumer-driven behaviour has not only harmed our well-being but also contributed to the climate emergency.
The solution? Returning to simpler, more sustainable ways of living that focus on human connection and creativity. By becoming creators rather than mere consumers we can improve our mental health and simultaneously benefit the planet.
One of the top 5 regrets of the dying is that they wished that they hadn’t worked so hard. Another is that they wished they’d been brave enough to pursue the life they’d really dreamed of, without worrying about what others thought; that they’d had the courage to do the things that made them truly happy. Which is ironic, really, because according to the 18th century economist and philosopher, Adam Smith, wealth is something that is “desired, not for the material satisfaction that it brings, but because it is desired by others”. People are getting to the end of their lives regretting that they worked so hard – often to accumulate wealth so that others could envy it – wishing that instead they had pursued things that truly made them happy regardless of what people thought. What a lesson we could learn from these people’s dying realisations.Source: We are not supposed to live like this | Erin Remblance[…]
Reducing our consumption is of course important for the health of the planet, but what if one way to do this is by becoming producers, or creators, ourselves? Rediscovering what our human-energy – an abundantly available energy we seem to be using increasingly less of – can achieve, something we once innately drew upon, now buried deep within us as fossil-fuelled energy has overtaken our lives. There’s a clear link here to actions that will mitigate climate change: walking, cycling, growing our own food, and other low-tech solutions such as repairing and fostering community that encourages “social connections … rather than fostering the hyper-individualism encouraged by resource-hungry digital devices.”
[…]
We are not supposed to live like this, and it shows. We can see it in the deterioration of mental and physical health of people in so called ‘wealthy’ nations, in the exploitation of people in the Global South, and we can see it in the planetary-wide ecological crisis we face. What if, in trying to heal ourselves, we also begin to heal the planet? Because, in a wonderful turn of events, it would seem that what is good for us, is good for the planet too.
Saving the world using a 2x2 matrix
I’m a fan of Venkatesh Rao’s writing, and in this post he explores what we mean by ‘saving’ when we talk about ‘saving the world’. To do this, he uses a 2x2 matrix, categorising people’s motivations along two axes: biological scope and temporal scope. He identifies four types of “worlds” people aim to save: Civilisations, represented by ethnocentrists; Technological Modernity, represented by cosmopolitans; Modern Nations, represented by patriots; and the World as Wildernesses, represented by Gaians.
Rao himself identifies as a “cosmopolitan with Gaian tendencies,” advocating for a world that is rich in both contemporary technological potentialities and natural history. He argues that the focus should not be on saving the world but on “rewilding” it so that it becomes self-sustaining and doesn’t require saving.
Worlds constructed with biologically narrow scopes (which I’d define as somewhere between family/kinship groups to ethnicities and races, with perhaps a few animal species of cultural significance included, but always falling short of including all of humanity, let alone all of the biosphere) have all sorts of analytical problems that makes them intellectually fragile. But my main problem with them is that they are boringly impoverished to the point of deadness. Even if I could, with careful construction, make them “work” as worlds-to-save, and imagine sustainable futures where they are the entirety of the world, I don’t see the point.Source: What we seek to save when we seek to save the world | RibbonfarmBut apparently, a significant portion of humanity disagrees with me on this front. Many are attracted to the idea that their world-to-save can expand to become all that is; replacing a messy, illegible pluralism with a gloriously insipid and legible monoculture that reigns supreme with a firm, dead hand. I suspect the very intellectual fragility of these worlds is part of their appeal, much as fragility is part of the appeal of house-of-cards games.
[…]
For a cosmopolitan with Gaian tendencies, to save the modern world is to rewild and grow the global web of already slightly wild technological capabilities. Along with all the knowledge and resources — globally distributed in ways that cannot be cleanly factored across nations, civilizations, and other collective narcissisms — that is required to drive that web sustainably. And in the process, perhaps letting notions of civilization — including wishful notions of regulating and governing technology in “human centric” ways — fall by the wayside if they lack the vitality and imagination to accommodate technological modernity.
Indigenous knowledge, sustainable design, and long-term thinking
This is a perfect example of the kind of sustainable design and long-term thinking we lose when we ignore indigenous knowledge.
In Western Australia, Marri trees, known as Gnaama Boorna in the Menang language, have been pruned by Aboriginal people for generations to collect and store rainwater. The ancient practice involves shaping the trees into a bowl-like structure, making them vital water sources in areas where water is scarce, and they are often found in ceremonial areas or high hills.
Source: Specially pruned for centuries in WA, marri trees provide a vital source of water for traditional owners | ABC NewsGnaama, meaning hole for water, and Boorna, meaning tree or timber.
[...]By pruning and trimming parts of specific trees as they grow, traditional owners encourage them to take on a unique, bowl-like shape — helping collect and store rain water.
NYC 🫶 renewable energy
New York’s Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) demonstrates the strength of grassroots movements and the potential of publicly owned utilities to lead the way in the adoption of renewable energy.
This serves as a reminder that decentralised power structures can be more agile and responsive to the needs of the public. When communities have a say in decision-making processes, they can make bold moves towards a sustainable future, create new jobs, and ensure equitable access to clean, affordable energy. ✊
New York state has passed legislation that will scale up the state’s renewable energy production and signals a major step toward moving utilities out of private hands to become publicly owned.Source: New York takes big step toward renewable energy in ‘historic’ climate win | The Guardian[…]
The Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) will ensure that all state-owned properties that ordinarily receive power from the New York power authority (NYPA) are run on renewable energy by 2030. It will also require municipally owned properties – including many hospitals and schools, as well as public housing and public transit – to switch to renewable energy by 2035.
[…]
The passage of this first-of-its-kind law comes after years of grassroots campaigning by climate and environmental organizers in New York state.
[…]
Historically, when utilities are owned by investors, profits go to shareholders. But in publicly owned models, profits are reinvested in the utility’s operations. Rates on energy bills are also generally lower.
[…]
The newly passed law also ensures creation of union jobs for the renewable projects, guaranteeing pay rate protection, offering retraining, and making sure that new positions are filled with workers who have lost or would be losing employment in the non-renewable energy sector.
Reducing long-distance travel
I agree with what Simon Jenkins is saying here about focusing on the ‘reduce’ part of sustainable travel. However, it does sound a bit like victim-blaming to say that people outside of London travel mainly by car.
We travel primarily by car because of the lack of other options. Infrastructure is important, including outside of our capital city.
It is an uncomfortable fact that most people outside London do most of their motorised travel by car. The answer to CO2 emissions is not to shift passengers from one mode of transport to another. It is to attack demand head on by discouraging casual hyper-mobility. The external cost of such mobility to society and the climate is the real challenge. It cannot make sense to predict demand for transport and then supply its delivery. We must slowly move towards limiting it.Source: Train or plane? The climate crisis is forcing us to rethink all long-distance travel | The GuardianOne constructive outcome of the Covid pandemic has been to radically revise the concept of a “journey to work”. Current predictions are that “hybrid” home-working may rise by as much as 20%, with consequent cuts in commuting travel. Rail use this month remains stubbornly at just 65% of its pre-lockdown level. Office blocks in city centres are still half-empty. Covid plus the digital revolution have at last liberated the rigid geography of labour.
Climate-sensitive transport policy should capitalise on this change. It should not pander to distance travel in any mode but discourage it. Fuel taxes are good. Road pricing is good. So are home-working, Zoom-meeting (however ghastly for some), staycationing, local high-street shopping, protecting local amenities and guarding all forms of communal activity.
Microcast #094 — Solarpunk vs technocratic pharaohs
Overview
A thematic look at sustainable futures, from equitable approaches to chimeric fetuses and phallic spaceships.
Show notes
See also: Bright green, blight green, and lean green futures (Open Thinkering)
Image: Solarpunk Flag by @Starwall@radical.town
Background music: Shimmers by Synth Soundscapes (aka Mentat)
The most sustainable foods?
I’m surprised at this list from The Guardian, which includes red meat. As of February, I don’t eat fish (or shellfish) so mussels are off the list for me as well.
What is important, I think, is the bit at the bottom about waste food. I’ve started putting coffee grounds on the garden, and that banana skin curry sounds… interesting!
If, as a planet, we stopped wasting food altogether, we’d eliminate 8% of our total emissions – so one easy way to eat for the planet would be to tackle that, Steel points out. That could be through preserving and making stock from meat and fish bones – but it could also be as simple as eating as much of a fruit or vegetable as possible. “The skin, the seeds, the leaves – these are where the phytonutrients are,” she says, citing Nigella’s banana skin curry as an example. Supporting companies which are repurposing waste – surplus bread into beer, surplus fruit into condiments and chutneys – is another easy win.Source: Eat this to save the world! The most sustainable foods – from seaweed to venison | The Guardian
Slow travel and camping in other people's gardens
A lazy way to describe this would be ‘Airbnb for camping’ but actually, it’s green, anti-capitalist and community-oriented. I might list my garden (as there aren’t many in the UK right now).
Welcome To My Garden is a not-for-profit network of citizens offering free camping spots in their gardens to slow travellers.Source: Welcome To My Garden
The end of petrol stations
Another article looking at the future of electric vehicles. I particularly like the section where it talks about how, if you were trying to sell the idea of petrol stations these days, you'd never get anyone to sign off the health and safety side of things.
Electric vehicle optimists paint a world where you can plug in anywhere you park - at home while you sleep, as you work, when you are shopping or at the cinema.
Pretty much whatever you are doing, energy will be flowing into your car.
At this point, says Erik Fairbairn, 97% of electric car charging will happen away from petrol pump equivalents.
"Imagine someone came around and filled up your car with petrol every night so you had 300 miles of range every morning," he says. "How often would you need anything else?"
In this brave new world, you'll only ever pull over into a service station on really epic, long journeys when you'll top up your battery for 20-30 minutes while you have a coffee and use the facilities.
Source: Why it's the end of the road for petrol stations | BBC News
Saturday shoutings
The link I'm most enthusiastic about sharing this week is one to a free email-based course I've created with my co-op colleagues. It's entitled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Virtual Meetings and part of a new series we're working on.
The other links are slightly fewer in number this week because time, it turns out, is finite.
Clean Language: David Grove Questioning Method
Developing Questions
"(And) what kind of X (is that X)?"
"(And) is there anything else about X?"
"(And) where is X? or (And) whereabouts is X?"
"(And) that's X like what?"
"(And) is there a relationship between X and Y?"
"(And) when X, what happens to Y?Sequence and Source Questions
"(And) then what happens? or (And) what happens next?"
"(And) what happens just before X?"
"(And) where could X come from?"Intention Questions
"(And) what would X like to have happen?"
"(And) what needs to happen for X?"
"(And) can X (happen)?"The first two questions: "What kind of X (is that X)?" and "Is there anything else about X?" are the most commonly used.
As a general guide, these two questions account for around 50% of the questions asked in a typical Clean Language session.
BusinessBalls
I had a great chat with Kristian Still this week, for the first time in about a decade. Kristian was part of EdTechRoundUp back in the day, and early EduTwitter. Among the many things we discussed is his enthusiasm for "clean questioning" which I'm going to investigate further.
How ‘Sustainable’ Web Design Can Help Fight Climate Change
Even our throwaway habits can add up to a mountain of carbon. Consider all the little social emails we shoot back and forth—“thanks,” “got it,” “lol.” The UK energy firm Ovo examined email usage and—using data from Lancaster University professor Mike Berners-Lee, who analyzes carbon footprints—they found that if every adult in the UK just sent one less “thank you” email per day, it would cut 16 tons of carbon each year, equal to 22 round-trip flights between New York and London. They also found that 49 percent of us often send thank-you emails to people “within talking distance.” We can lower our carbon output if we'd just take the headphones off for a minute and stop behaving like a bunch of morlocks.
Clive Thompson (WIRED)
Small differences all add up. Our design choices and the decisions we make about technology all have a part to play in fighting climate change.
Apple, Big Sur, and the rise of Neumorphism
When you boil it down, neumorphism is a focus on how light moves in three-dimensional space. Its predecessor, skeumorphism, created realism in digital interfaces by simulating textures on surfaces like felt on a poker table or the brushed metal of a tape recorder. An ancillary — though under-developed — aspect of this design style was lighting that interacted realistically with the materials that were being represented; this is why shadows and darkness were so prevalent in those early interfaces.
Jack Koloskus (Input)
The dominant design language over the last five years, without doubt, has been Google's Material Design. Will a neumorphic approach take over? It's certainly an interesting approach.
Snowden: Tech Workers Are Complicit in How Their Companies Hurt Society
He called on those in the tech industry to look at the bigger picture regarding their work and its implications beyond simply a project—and to think deeply and take a stronger stand with regards to who their labor actually serves.
“It’s not enough to read, it’s not enough to believe in something, it’s not enough to write something, you have to eventually stand for something if you want things to change,” he said.
Kevin Truong (Motherboard)
The tech industry is an interesting one as it's a relatively new and immature one, at least in its current guise. As a result, the ethics, and the checks and balances aren't quite there yet.
To my mind, things like unions and professional associations show maturity and the kind of coming together that don't put moral decisions on the shoulders of individuals, but rather on the whole sector.
Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness
[T]here is a narrative chasm between the twee and borderless dreamscape of fantasy Britain and actual, material Britain, where rents are rising and racists are running brave. The chasm is wide, and a lot of people are falling into it. The omnishambles of British politics is what happens when you get scared and mean and retreat into the fairytales you tell about yourself. When you can no longer live within your own contradictions. When you want to hold on to the belief that Britain is the land of Jane Austen and John Lennon and Sir Winston Churchill, the war hero who has been repeatedly voted the greatest Englishman of all time. When you want to forget that Britain is also the land of Cecil Rhodes and Oswald Mosley and Sir Winston Churchill, the brutal colonial administrator who sanctioned the building of the first concentration camps and condemned millions of Indians to death by starvation. These are not contradictions, even though the drive to separate them is cracking the country apart. If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by.
Laurie Penny (Longreads)
I always find looking at my country through the lens of foreigners cringe-inducing. I suppose it's a narrative produced for tourists but, sadly, we seem to have believed our own rhetoric, and look where it's gotten us...
How Big Tech Monopolies Distort Our Public Discourse
The idea that Big Tech can mold discourse through bypassing our critical faculties by spying on and analyzing us is both self-serving (inasmuch as it helps Big Tech sell ads and influence services) and implausible, and should be viewed with extreme skepticism
But you don't have to accept extraordinary claims to find ways in which Big Tech is distorting and degrading our public discourse. The scale of Big Tech makes it opaque and error-prone, even as it makes the job of maintaining a civil and productive space for discussion and debate impossible.
Cory Doctorow (EFF)
A tour de force from Doctorow, who eviscerates the companies that make up 'Big Tech' and the role they have in hollowing-out civic society.
Header image by Andrea Piacquadio
Ensuring the sustainability of Thought Shrapnel
Over the last couple of months, after coming back from a hiatus over Lent, I've really poured my free time into Thought Shrapnel. My hope was that, by providing daily content, there would be a corresponding uptick in the number of people willing to become a supporter.
In fact, the opposite has happened, with almost 10% of supporters ending their backing of Thought Shrapnel over the past few weeks. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong here.
After some research and comparison with other creators, I think I've figured out what's gone wrong:
Most people do not want more email. So if the only thing you have to offer them is, ‘Hey, subscribe to this newsletter and you’ll get some more email,’ that’s not that compelling. But if you can create a different value proposition where you can say, ‘Look, I’m creating the kind of writing that you can’t find anywhere else and I need you to be a part of this and to support this work if you value it,’ then I think that people get into that. And they want to get it four times a week, but it’s not necessarily the idea of getting it four times a week that is going to be the motivating factor.
Judd Legum
Nobody asked me to send them more email. Not one of the supporters asked for 'exclusive access' to articles a week before everyone else. I just assumed.
With Thought Shrapnel, it's not the money that drives me. After hosting costs, etc. I give away most of what I receive to support other creators and worthy causes. Rather, it's the exchange of energy that's important to me. Committing to even $1/month is different to just hitting 'like' or 'retweet'.
So, going forward, I'm going to try a different approach. For everything I publish:
On Mondays I'll publish an article-style post. On Wednesdays I'll publish a post answering any questions that have come in, or a microcast. And then on Fridays I'll publish a round-up post of interesting links.
I'm still aiming to share 30 links per week. The weekly newsletter will still be a digest of what's gone on the open web. I just hope that trying things this way will both be more sustainable.
So, I have a couple of questions:
Thanks in advance!
Ensuring the sustainability of Thought Shrapnel
Over the last couple of months, after coming back from a hiatus over Lent, I've really poured my free time into Thought Shrapnel. My hope was that, by providing daily content, there would be a corresponding uptick in the number of people willing to become a supporter.
In fact, the opposite has happened, with almost 10% of supporters ending their backing of Thought Shrapnel over the past few weeks. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong here.
After some research and comparison with other creators, I think I've figured out what's gone wrong:
Most people do not want more email. So if the only thing you have to offer them is, ‘Hey, subscribe to this newsletter and you’ll get some more email,’ that’s not that compelling. But if you can create a different value proposition where you can say, ‘Look, I’m creating the kind of writing that you can’t find anywhere else and I need you to be a part of this and to support this work if you value it,’ then I think that people get into that. And they want to get it four times a week, but it’s not necessarily the idea of getting it four times a week that is going to be the motivating factor.
Judd Legum
Nobody asked me to send them more email. Not one of the supporters asked for 'exclusive access' to articles a week before everyone else. I just assumed.
With Thought Shrapnel, it's not the money that drives me. After hosting costs, etc. I give away most of what I receive to support other creators and worthy causes. Rather, it's the exchange of energy that's important to me. Committing to even $1/month is different to just hitting 'like' or 'retweet'.
So, going forward, I'm going to try a different approach. For everything I publish:
On Mondays I'll publish an article-style post. On Wednesdays I'll publish a post answering any questions that have come in, or a microcast. And then on Fridays I'll publish a round-up post of interesting links.
I'm still aiming to share 30 links per week. The weekly newsletter will still be a digest of what's gone on the open web. I just hope that trying things this way will both be more sustainable.
So, I have a couple of questions:
Thanks in advance!
The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources
This map of what happens when you interact with a digital assistant such as the Amazon Echo is incredible. The image is taken from a length piece of work which is trying to bring attention towards the hidden costs of using such devices.
With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user’s commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience – be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song – requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives.It's a tour de force. Here's another extract:
When a human engages with an Echo, or another voice-enabled AI device, they are acting as much more than just an end-product consumer. It is difficult to place the human user of an AI system into a single category: rather, they deserve to be considered as a hybrid case. Just as the Greek chimera was a mythological animal that was part lion, goat, snake and monster, the Echo user is simultaneously a consumer, a resource, a worker, and a product. This multiple identity recurs for human users in many technological systems. In the specific case of the Amazon Echo, the user has purchased a consumer device for which they receive a set of convenient affordances. But they are also a resource, as their voice commands are collected, analyzed and retained for the purposes of building an ever-larger corpus of human voices and instructions. And they provide labor, as they continually perform the valuable service of contributing feedback mechanisms regarding the accuracy, usefulness, and overall quality of Alexa’s replies. They are, in essence, helping to train the neural networks within Amazon’s infrastructural stack.Well worth a read, especially alongside another article in Bloomberg about what they call 'oral literacy' but which I referred to in my thesis as 'oracy':
Should the connection between the spoken word and literacy really be so alien to us? After all, starting in the 1950s, basic literacy training in elementary schools in the United States has involved ‘phonics.’ And what is phonics but a way of attaching written words to the sounds they had been or could become? The theory grew out of the belief that all those lines of text on the pages of schoolbooks had become too divorced from their sounds; phonics was intended to give new readers a chance to recognize written language as part of the world of language they already knew.The technological landscape is reforming what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Interestingly, some of that is a kind of a return to previous forms of human interaction that we used to value a lot more.
Sources: Anatomy of AI and Bloomberg
Simple sustainable stories
Some people are easy to follow online. They have one social media account to which they post regularly, and back that up with a single website where they expand on those points.
Stowe Boyd, whose work I’ve followed (or attempted to follow) for a few years now, is not one of these people. In fact, the number of platforms he tried earlier this year prompted me to get in touch with him to ask just how many platforms now had his subscribers' email addresses.
Ironically, it was only last week that I decided to support Stowe’s latest venture via Substack. However, in a post yesterday he explains that he’s going ‘back to square one’:
I won’t recapitulate the many transitions that have gone on in my search for the 'right’ newsletter/subscription technologies over the past year. But I have come to the conclusion that I am more interested in growing the community of Work Futures readers than I am in trying to make cash flow from it.The thing I've learned about posting things to the internet over the last twenty years is that nobody cares. People support things that reflect who they believe themselves to be right now. That changes over time.
So if you’re putting things online, you have to make sure it works for you. Even the most fun jobs imaginable can become… something else if you focus too much on what a fickle audience wants.
As I said, I am motivated to take these steps in part by the desire to simplify my daily activities, and shelve work patterns that suck time. But I am equally motivated by making the discourse around these topics more open, while encouraging people to support Work Futures, but in that order of importance.Openness always wins. You can support Stowe's work via donations, and my work via Patreon.
Source: Work Futures
Clickbait and switch?
Should you design for addiction or for loyalty? That’s the question posed by Michelle Manafy in this post for Nieman Lab. It all depends, she says, on whether you’re trying to attract users or an audience.
With advertising as the primary driver of web revenue, many publishers have chased the click dragon. Seeking to meet marketers’ insatiable desire for impressions, publishers doubled down on quick clicks. Headlines became little more than a means to a clickthrough, often regardless of whether the article would pay off or even if the topic was worthy of coverage. And — since we all know there are still plenty of publications focusing on hot headlines over substance — this method pays off. In short-term revenue, that is.Audiences mature over time and become wary of particular approaches. Remember “…and you’ll not believe what came next” approaches?However, the reader experience that shallow clicks deliver doesn’t develop brand affinity or customer loyalty. And the negative consumer experience has actually been shown to extend to any advertising placed in its context. Sure, there are still those seeking a quick buck — but these days, we all see clickbait for what it is.
Ask Manafy notes, it’s much easier to design for addiction than to build an audience. The former just requires lots and lots of tracking — something at which the web has become spectacularly good at, due to advertising.
For example, many push notifications are specifically designed to leverage the desire for human interaction to generate clicks (such as when a user is alerted that their friend liked an article). Push notifications and alerts are also unpredictable (Will we have likes? Mentions? New followers? Negative comments?). And this unpredictability, or B.F. Skinner’s principle of variable rewards, is the same one used in those notoriously addictive slot machines. They’re also lucrative — generating more revenue in the U.S. than baseball, theme parks, and movies combined. A pull-to-refresh even smacks of a slot machine lever.The problem is that designing for addiction isn't a long-term strategy. Who plays Farmville these days? And the makers of Candy Crush aren't exactly crushing it with their share price these days.
Sure, an addict is “engaged” — clicking, liking, swiping — but what if they discover that your product is bad for them? Or that it’s not delivering as much value as it does harm? The only option for many addicts is to quit, cold turkey. Sure, many won’t have the willpower, and you can probably generate revenue off these users (yes, users). But is that a long-term strategy you can live with? And is it a growth strategy, should the philosophical, ethical, or regulatory tide turn against you?The 'regulatory tide' referenced here is exemplified through GDPR, which is already causing a sea change in attitude towards user data. Compliance with teeth, it seems, gets results.
Designing for sustainability isn’t just good from a regulatory point of view, it’s good for long-term business, argues Manafy:
Where addiction relies on an imbalanced and unstable relationship, loyal customers will return willingly time and again. They’ll refer you to others. They’ll be interested in your new offerings, because they will already rely on you to deliver. And, as an added bonus, these feelings of goodwill will extend to any advertising you deliver too. Through the provision of quality content, delivered through excellent experiences at predictable and optimal times, content can become a trusted ally, not a fleeting infatuation or unhealthy compulsion.Instead of thinking of your audience as 'users' waiting for their next hit, she suggests, think of them as your audience. That's a much better approach and will help you make much better design decisions.
Source: Nieman Lab
Potentially huge wind farm proposed in the North Sea
Dogger Bank, which thousands of years ago as Doggerland would have been visible from the North East of England where I live, is the proposed site for a huge new wind farm complex with a central island power hub.
To accommodate all the equipment, the island would take up around 5-6 sq km, about a fifth the size of Hayling Island in the English Channel.The short YouTube video is pretty cool.
While the actual engineering challenge of building the island seems enormous, Van der Hage is not daunted. “Is it difficult? In the Netherlands, when we see a piece of water we want to build islands or land. We’ve been doing that for centuries. That is not the biggest challenge,” he said.
Source: The Guardian