So much of our technological “innovations” are either about flinging existing bits from Point A to Point B, or making new bits to fling from Point A to Point B. We consume bits, and we create bits, most of us consuming far more bits than we create. Those bits take the form of TV shows, video games, photographs, books, music, Tweets and Facebook Statuses, and pithy blog posts about technology, but they’re all just bits. We can make them faster, and we can fling them faster, but they’re still just bits.
There are so many problems that cannot be solved by flinging bits. No matter how many bits we can fling per second, those bits won’t clean someone’s filthy drinking water, slow down global warming, or any of a number of problems that require flinging real things, which requires real people. Sure, sometimes flinging bits can result in flinging a real thing, but those bits aren’t the thing, they are just the signal that a real thing is needed. You fling bits to Uber, Uber flings bits to a driver, the driver comes to you.
That’s all well and good. But you can’t fling bits to get clean water. Many people without clean water don’t even have a device to fling bits with. Even if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good until they have the infrastructure to fling bits.
There’s so much brainpower and money locked up in making and flinging bits. If we applied that same money and brainpower to flinging real things, what miracles might we bring about?
As women, we’re often told that this Internet harassment is “not real,†that it’s “just the Internet,†that we need to expect it and develop “thicker skin.†Women internalize these ideas, too, or at least accept that we can’t turn back the tides of abuse that we have to deal with…
And yet, as women, we know that, no matter how thick our hides might be, the emotional effects and physical dangers of Internet harassment are all too real.
It’s not that email is broken or productivity tools all suck; it’s just that culture changes. People make email clients or to-do list apps in the same way that theater companies perform Shakespeare plays in modern dress. “Email†is our Hamlet. “To-do apps†are our Tempest.
An interesting point of view from a programmer on the prevalence of new apps that try to solve the same old problems we thought the last set of apps solved. The problems aren't the same, and neither are the solutions, at least to a programmer. More importantly, and what Paul misses, is that the there is never going to be a one-size fits all solution for how any of us choose to work.
What's problematic about the glut of email apps and to-do lists, is that they have a low barrier to entry (at least, for to-do lists), and to the average end user there's not a lot of difference between Wunderlist and Things, or between Dispatch and Mailbox. It's why I'm glad something like The Sweet Setup exists, to carve through the glut for us. But that glut is so large that it looks like, at least to outsiders, there's nothing groundbreaking happening. That's a dangerous image to have in a crowded market of undifferentiated goods.
Marco Arment released his long awaited podcast app, Overcast, today. As soon as the tweet went out that it was live, my Twitter stream became loaded with praise from beta testers, links to reviews, and more than a few jokes about when Marco was going to sell the app. Which lead to an interesting, if convoluted, conversation between Sid O'Neill, and The Typist on the echo chamber of praise and the potential bias inherent in Marco's supporters/beta testers singing the product's praise on their blogs. In terms of bias, the conversation wasn't about Marco per se, but whether one's biases in promoting a friend's work compromises journalistic ethics.
In terms of ethics, it comes down to trust. A number of the people promoting Overcast—John Siracusa, John Gruber, Jim Dalrymple, Federico Viticci, just to name a few—have earned my trust by writing quality, (mostly) unbiased technology journalism and criticism over the years. These are people who know good software, and so does Marco Arment. I've used Instapaper for years, as well as Tumblr. I can't speak for his other famous app, Nursing Clock, as I've had no cause to use it. (You gotta love the icon, though.) Overcast has the pedigree of a developer who knows his stuff, and the support of a group of technologists who have proven they know their stuff too. Yes, much of the positive buzz is coming from people who are friends and collaborators with Marco, but they've proven I can trust their judgment.
In any sort of independent community, having an audience of not only fans who support you, but influential voices who support you is critical to your success. This holds true, even for a “big name” indie creator. If it comes off as a backpat circlejerk to someone outside of that circle of voices, which it can be, understand that it's the nature of the beast. When you're an independent creator, this is life or death. I have friends who are professional working musicians, and I both love their work and will sing its praises to anyone who listens when they deliver something new. I don't do it here, but I might in the future.
The inherent risk, as The Typist notes, is the bias of friendship overriding the quality of the work, and the validity of the endorsement. Again, it's a matter of trust. Both the trust of our audiences in knowing we know of what we speak, and also the trust of the creator in knowing they'll get an unbiased critique. I like to think that my musician friends can trust I will be unbiased when criticizing work, though it's telling that none have offered me a chance to hear any works-in-progress. To use Overcast as an example, many of Marco's beta testers are known for being critical and opinionated on software—John Siracusa enough so that his blog, and former podcast are both called Hypercritical. John Gruber is infamous for being borderline anal-retentive on software design, which shows in his app Vesper. If anyone is going to give Marco an unbiased criticism of his app, it's going to be those two. (Siracusa will be delivering a full critique on the next Accidental Tech Podcast)
Of course, the bigger the name, independent or not, the more people will be chiming in with their own criticism. I worry more about bias coming from this larger group, to be honest. Most are just people who want their own voices to be heard in the din of technology blogging. Some are people with a vendetta and want it to be known to the world. It's, again, the nature of the ever-changing beast of online publishing. The latest episode of Back to Work covers that in detail, with great personal stories. Talking up a hot topic is a proven way to get hits, and if their Google Juice is strong enough, a well written review of Overcast might get them noticed. It's the potential starting point for discovering a new, trusted voice to add value to the conversation—but for most of us, it's just another annoying retweet to scroll past.
For people like Sid, who grow tired of the din of echo chamber, there are only two ways out. One is exerting more control over what you see by judicious muting, unfollowing, or just stepping away. If the stream of Overcast tweets grew too much, I could easy have told Tweetbot to silence any mention of it for the next 24 hours. The second is to pay it no mind, and write the Internet you want to read. Which is why I'm writing up this metacommentary on the whole conversation around the Overcast conversation. There's a lot of important issues to discuss around technology journalism, independent creation, and what we choose—or don't choose—to see in our streams.
And we might not have had the conversation at all without some big name indie developer putting out yet another podcast app. Funny how the Internet works.
The recent launch of April Zero, a gorgeous public display of personal tracking data caught our eyes, as well. I can’t speak for Nicholas Felton, aka Feltron, but I suspect that half of his self-tracking is to provide data for him to experiment with data visualization and design as it is collecting the details of his life. Data can be gorgeous, and our lives are a gold mine of potentially interesting data to collect and visualize. Anyone who self-tracks as a hobby I can’t fault.
Some part of me approached life-logging and self-tracking from a hobbyist perspective, but I wasn’t getting any of the pleasures that come from a hobby out of it. If I flipped thought my Moves data, it was often the same basic route five days a week. Weekends had variation, but not a whole lot. I’m a creature of routine. I stop at the same set of lunch spots on Seventh Avenue, hit the gym three times a week, go to a writing group on the West Side, and occasionally go to a concert. My location data is the opposite of beautiful. It’s dull. Dull. Dull. My God it’s dull, it’s so desperately dull and tedious and stuffy and boring and des-per-ate-ly DULL.
If I’m not getting anything out of self-tracking that’s worth the set up time, battery draining, and mindfulness of checking up on my data, is it worth it? Of course not. Each of these services I drop is one less piece of mental clutter, more space on my hard drive, and—yes—less data I’m giving up for free to some venture-backed startup company that’s just going to get eaten by Facebook or Google in a year or two. Which is why I stick with tracking stuff that focuses on actionable data. If I know I’m spending two hours a week on Facebook, or Tweetbot is my most used iPhone app, that’s actionable data.
Yet, the Quantified Self and Life-Logging movements are fascinating. There’s something incredible about the amount of accurate sensors we can cram into our devices—we’re almost to a Star Trek Tricorder in our phone. The biggest reason why I haven’t replaced my lost Fitbit is that I’m curious what Apple is going to in the fitness tracker space once iOS 8 comes out. We’re in early days and still learning what we should track, when, and why. Those answers aren’t going to be the same for all of us.