I have had a couple conversations about AI this week where my perspective was surprising to others, so I wanted to more broadly share my thoughts to seed more possibilities about the future impact of AI. A few articles that prompted these conversations: (Aside: In originally editing this post, I realized the articles below are […]
Category: design
Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows
Amazon link This is a remarkably readable introduction to systems thinking, a method to understand the inherent behavior of a system, and design appropriate interventions to change what the system is doing. Meadows starts by defining a system as “an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something. … […]
Purpose and meaning
I’ve been having several conversations recently about purpose and meaning, so I thought it was time for me to write a blog post to try to sort out my own fuzzy thoughts on the subject. What does it mean to have a purpose? Do we all have to have a purpose? Do people with a […]
Overlap!
I’ve mentioned Overlap several times in this blog over the last five years, and I’ve always meant to do a more in-depth post about it, and it’s finally time to do that. The occasion of this post is that I attended my fifth Overlap retreat over Memorial Day weekend, and not only did I attend, […]
Thinking like a Futurist with Jane McGonigal
[n.b. I added a MailChimp subscription link to the sidebar if you want to get email notifications of posts rather than depending on RSS, Facebook or Twitter to see when I update] I’ve been a fan of Jane McGonigal for a decade, after being introduced to her via her Cruel 2 B Kind game in […]
Repurposing the college experience
I was having coffee with the always fascinating Grant McCracken last week, and we got into a digression on the function of the university in the world today (part of what I love about talking to Grant is that our conversations end up in such interesting places). It stemmed from a discussion about whether my […]
Utopian Entrepreneur, by Brenda Laurel
Amazon link A few weeks ago, somebody on Facebook linked to this great long interview with Brenda Laurel who is one of the original interaction designers, developing game designs based on user research. A representative quote from the interview, of her experience teaching game designers now: once [these game designers] talk to real people about […]
I love my bike
I’ve been riding my bike more to start training for the Death Ride in July (and because the weather is ludicrously nice in California – it got into the 80s this week). And I was thinking this morning that I love my bike. From 2011 to 2014, my main bike was a Surly Long Haul […]
The challenge of humanity
[This is a response to an email prompt from a design-y list I’m on, where the original poster posited that “Computing is all around us” and “we are a part of the computer”, but after writing the response, I thought it was general purpose enough to post here] I think it is a mistake to […]
The Anthropology of Innovation panel
Last week, the Computer History Museum hosted a panel on “The Anthropology of Innovation”. I had to attend since I’m a fan of anthropology, I’m fascinated by corporate culture and how it leads to goals like innovation, and the panel featured Genevieve Bell of Intel, who Jofish and Janet interned with in Portland one summer. […]
