I eventually concluded that posting my photos publicly wasn’t beneficial for myself and I chose to break ties. I deleted my photos and deactivated my accounts from all photo-sharing sites I belonged to. I then set up a simple site that only a handful of people know about (no links to the site exist, so it’s private for all intents and purposes). It contains one hundred photographs which I deem my best. To add a photo, another must be removed.

Positive Sensory Deprivation

These two decisions—keeping my photos private and reserved to 100 slots—has made a profoundly positive impact on my photography. The 100-photograph limit forced me to look long and hard through all my work. That process alone provided a wonderful opportunity for reflection. It allowed me to spot patterns, tendencies and weaknesses in my photos. It also put the emphasis on improvement. The only way I can add a photo is if I’ve created a new photo that’s at least my 100th-best. This subsequently closes the door on “posting-just-to-post”—it just isn’t an option.

By keeping the gallery private, it forced me to work in a vacuum. I know many people would think that’s detrimental—I have found it immensely beneficial. I cannot rely on anyone else but myself to judge my work. We’re so used to determining the value of our photographs by the attention (or lack thereof) it receives, that it stunts the ability to critically judge our own work. I analyze, re-evaluate and think about my photographs now more than ever. I go to my site multiple times a day to look through the photos and judge if they belong there. While I used to be mainly concerned on generating more, I quickly began to focus on being better.

I cannot put into words just how fulfilling the photographic process has become for me by making this change which is why I felt driven to write about it. So much of photography is a solitary pursuit—forcing myself into solitude made photography an immeasurably richer experience.

However, that means that this blog will be a little light on the updates (translation: no updates) until early 2014. That said, I am still very busy blogging at the Iconic Blog which I highly recommend that you subscribe to. Since I’m going to be 100% on Iconic, that means all other projects (e.g., Frank) are on hold. That said, I put quite a lot of time into Frank prior to Iconic and should have a lot to talk about in Spring 2014.

Until then, I hope to see you on the Iconic Blog!

Thanks to @rob_dodson, I am making a declaration. I will blog once a week for the next 3 months or I will donate $1000 John Boehner. Done.

— PJ Onori (@somerandomdude) April 11, 2013

Blogging under fear

Fear is a powerful motivator. My Grandmother often spoke about how a little booze everyday was good for you. I feel the same way about fear. Not paralyzing dread, but a nagging anxiety—something which maintains a sense of urgency. I never had that sense of urgency with blogging. It was always something I did, or didn’t do. There were no consequences if I didn’t publish. So I would delay, fiddle, get distracted or bored—all of which would result in delay. My self-imposed deadline removed all that. Optimal circumstances didn’t matter. A blog post would be written each week, period. Fear made that happen.

In the first few weeks, failure meant having to drop a grand and deal with the fallout it would cause. At the end of the three months, failure meant not blogging. For most of my time blogging, traffic was a significant priority. I’ve now let that go. Writing has always helped my thinking. It’s the way I try to organize disparate, disorganized thoughts into something comprehendible. Writing more frequently meant that I was forced to crystalize my thoughts more often. I’m not a good writer, but doing this has made me a better one. Writing consistently has been like keeping my muscles in shape. This should have been a consistent activity for the last five years, but better late than never.

What I’ve learned

Getting to the first draft has always been my highest hurdle. Writing with hard deadlines has helped me through this. Over the course of a couple weeks, a process began to take shape. This is how it usually worked.

Once I determine what I’ll be writing about, I take a day to let my thoughts settle. I write my notes throughout that day and at the end of it, I edit, consolidate, remove and organize all of those notes into a basic structure. The next day, I convert those structured notes into a first draft. I try to force myself not to do anything else until that first draft is complete. I call this sophisticated process the “shut up and just do it method”. I’ve observed beer enhances this process.

I hack my first draft together. If I can’t think of the right way to say something or an appropriate word I will add brackets around the problem area to review later. If something is holding me up, I simply move on. I then go back through all the bracketed sections and clean them up one by one. Without exception, those sections which once seemed difficult weren’t so after I came back to them.

Once the first draft is complete, I try to read through it a few times to see if I can condense the writing and clarify my points. I’m lucky to be married to someone with a Master’s degree in English so I rarely let anything out of the door without her reading it. I’m noticing as the years go by that I can impersonate her editing style, which is slowly removing that need. Once I’m happy with the writing, I go back and add imagery if/when it’s necessary. If you read my posts, that ends up being infrequently.

Perhaps the most important step is that once the blog post is published, I get started on the next post quickly. I try to get the ball rolling the day I publish or the day after. Writing used to be such a monumental effort that I would need a breather afterwards. Making the process faster removes the need for the followup break.

It’s worth it

This is not a perfect solution, but it’s how I’m getting myself to write more. I’m less-than-certain that more people are reading my writing, but it’s having a positive impact on me and that’s all that matters. Some people are naturally focused or capable of following a regimen on their own. Others need a little fear to jump start the process. No matter your job or interest, improving your writing can only make you better at what you do. If you’re willing to put yourself through a little anxiety, I suggest you try this out. It will be worth a few stressful days and late nights.

There are three reasons why I’m doing this. First, the primary goal of Frank is to be as fast as possible. By removing these features, I’ve been able to cut the CSS file by 25% (~27Kb uncompressed, ~16Kb compressed, ~4.5Kb compressed and gzipped). For most sites, removing features like these for roughly 9Kb would be extreme, but that’s kind of the point of Frank—extreme speed.

The second reason is that by removing these extra features, it makes the code far more maintainable for me to continue pushing this project forward. Time is so scarce at this point that I need to set this project up for success. This step helps.

The last reason is that I am hoping to port Frank over to Ghost when it’s released. I’m uncertain how much effort this will take, but the less code I need to move over, the easier it should be.

The other big effort for Frank 0.10.0 was to improve the reading experience. I don’t have screenshots yet, but I am pretty convinced that the new version will be much easier on the eyes.

My goal is to have 0.10.0 ready in the next few weeks. I should have a more accurate data in the days to come.

Well it’s the basis of our affluence now, the fact that we spend less on food. It’s America’s best-kept secret. We feed ourselves with approximately 16 or 17 percent of our take home pay. That’s marvelous, that’s a very small chunk to feed ourselves.

To Earl Butz, a man who grew up in the depression and no doubt saw the effects of hunger first-hand, it seemed ludicrous to see cheap food as a problem. However, the rise of heart disease, obesity and diabetes can arguably be attributed to the policies he helped create. Earl Butz solved a huge problem and created another in return.

The things we create, the problems we solve, often create entirely new problems. I see the work being done surrounding the internet to have a lot in common with what Earl Butz did with food. Humanity had considerable difficulty accessing information, so we gave ourselves access to virtually everything. We are now drowning in information. I could see a similar interview 50 years from now where someone from our generation tries to explain how everything we did was with the best of intentions.

The information we take in on a daily basis is a lot like the food we eat. The nutrition, calories and quantity we consume impact our well-being. Sadly, much of the content consumed online is equivalent to junk food. Status updates, short-form blog posts, memes, animated gifs, etc. They’re tasty, enjoyable morsels with zero nutritional value. The bite-sized format means we can keep popping them all day long. It’s a trough filled with nothing but empty calories.

This has been my life for the past 10 or so years. Unsurprisingly, it has not had a positive impact on my mind. I have been struggling with distraction. Concentration was becoming a considerable task. It hadn’t affected my work, but I could see it starting to creep into my personal life. After writing my last article, I had an honest look at the things taking my time. I had a lot of regret.

Rather promptly, I decided to remove information sources I deemed nutrient sparse from my life. Reddit is gone, Twitter is now only on my phone and off the home screen. All notifications except the absolute essentials have been turned off. My collection of RSS feeds have been significantly pared down.

The changes so far are subtle, but visible. My concentration is improving. I am calmer, less distracted. I am becoming a more mindful person. I spend more time creating and more importantly, I spend more quality time creating.

As creators, we need to think about the implications of what we make. We are not just creators though, we are equally vulnerable to the problems we bring to bear. So while I am actively trying to avoid the things which are hurting my mind, I am also thinking about how I can make things that don’t hurt other people’s minds. Until then, I’m stepping away from the trough, and not coming back.

Today we are drowning in media. The value of media has plummeted and society treats it as such. People’s relationship with it is casual, disposable, temporary. This new relationship poses an issue for great works made in this new reality. The ability to stand out is a monumental feat. The difference between great and mediocre can be subtle, taking time to discern. Time people no longer commit. It’s easy to miss a masterpiece in the daily flood of information consumption.

In turn, the market has responded. Media creators deliver quickly accessible pieces of work to appeal to shorter attention spans and our casual relationship with media. Reality TV, microblogs, status updates. Those all exist for a reason. Additionally, creating media is easier than ever, which has brought a new segment of media creators – often referred to as everyone. We are bludgeoned with amateur photography, citizen journalism and part-time bloggers (like myself). Content creators used to be comprised only of those willing or able to commit themselves to the craft, for the purpose of making a living. The resources, training, and commitment it took to support oneself allowed only a select few to make it. Marissa Mayer recently declared the end of the professional photographer. Her statement is sad, but carries a lot of truth.

The flood of information, decreased attention span, and democratization of media creation has created a signal to noise ratio so low that there is essentially no recognizable signal. In the fortunate case where something great does rise above the fray to get noticed, it likely will not stand out for an extended amount of time. Nothing has time to embed in our lives, let alone our culture.

None of this thinking is new, but we are still trying to make sense of what will be the result of it. One postulation I have is that we’ve effectively seen the end of prolific singular works. There will be no great American novel, no Mona Lisa, no 9th Symphony. The age of immortality is over.

Our work may be forgotten, but its “genes” can now be passed down through the mashups, iterations, memes and references found down the stream. In X years time, no one will remember a great piece of work, but they will unknowingly see it in its descendants.

In the past, people aspired to create something that would be remembered past their life. If I’m right, people will need to settle for a blip on the radar of consciousness but a recognizable, yet unnoticed family tree of descendants. There’s no way to stop this unless people consciously decide to change their behavior en masse. Consuming content will continually require less time, money and effort. It will require a dedication to move against the path of least resistance. In my most optimistic moments, I’m skeptical.

In some ways this is good. This environment could create less demigodery and cult of celebrity. More focus on evolution. More segments of the population able to participate, allowing greater diversity and faster mutation. In many ways, the process of intellectual work would mimic evolution in nature. The network makes our ideas a “living” species.

Still, I wonder if some will look back with regret of what was lost. There will be fewer if no singular beacons to rally around. No peaks of humanity to aspire towards. Our work will simply be another link in the evolutional chain.

By everything, I mean *everything*. Sketches, wireframes, visual comps, clickable demos, beta releases, version 1.0 and version 2.0. They’re all a prototype for *what comes next*. This could be seen as arguing over semantics, so let me explain why this distinction is important.

Prototypes are built with the explicit purpose of learning. Good prototypes don’t get bogged down in the details until necessary. Thus, they’re streamlined and fast. There’s a clear acknowledgement of “I don’t know”. Changed is assumed and failure, to varying degrees, is an expectation. Understanding is the product of a prototype.

When working to make something exactly right, the blinders go on. A disproportionate amount of time is spent fussing instead of learning. More than often you find a fundamental flaw in your thinking; all your time fussing was for not. This process is inefficient and hit-or-miss.

Today’s digital products have short lives. Technologies change, expectations change. The things designers obsess over today will be forgotten tomorrow. What persists is the knowledge uncovered through the process of creation. It’s those learnings that will make the next manifestation better. That’s why viewing design as a constant state of prototyping is important. It puts us in a state of fluidity, a openness to learn and respond. The focus is on what needs to be learned.

The dirty little secret about design is that no one *absolutely* knows if something will to work until it’s tried. Even time-tested approaches can fall flat given the right (or perhaps wrong) circumstances. I like to say that the first try isn’t what’s important – it’s the *second* try. How a designer responds and adapts to what was learned in between those two steps is what matters.

Now, you’re obviously going to apply this principle differently in a sketch than a version 1.0. The experiments and risks taken with a mature product will be more subtle, the learning opportunities more focused. There isn’t the same leeway with mature, public products, but there still is space for controlled experimentation. This approach can be applied to any of the traditional steps in the design process. It’s more a way of designing than a particular kind of output.

Human beings are not perfect. As such, the things we make are imperfect as well. However, we have an amazing capacity to learn and adapt from our mistakes. It only makes sense then to focus less on perfect on more on slowly, constantly better. The process of design should improve *yourself* as much as what you’re designing.

The thing about Lefty was that he was very large and fairly immobile. This can be challenging for someone trying to teach something as kinetic as pitching. Our interactions were almost always through words. He would sit five feet away from the mound, watch my mechanics and provide advice through words. Most coaches in my 12+ years playing baseball had a physically-involved method of teaching. They would physically adjust you or explain the mechanics by performing them. This was not an option for Lefty so he relied on imparting entirely physical concepts through verbal explanation. Looking back, I don’t think I fully understood how amazing of an accomplishment that was.

In many ways, this is what designers are tasked to do. Designers have a hands-off relationship with the people they’re trying to introduce concepts to. Success relies on teaching a person to interact with the product without “physically adjusting” them. The interface is most often the conduit of education. It’s one of the most important yet least discussed topics of what we do.

When the iPhone was first revealed, Apple was introducing concepts that were entirely new to the general public. Their ad campaigns were half showcase, half school lesson.

Their ads were intended to generate demand, but they also doubled as a 30 second primer on how to use the device. The iPhone ended up being intuitive to so many people because they had been pummeled with ads showing them how to use it.

Most products don’t have the luxury of nation-wide ad campaigns, so they need to rely on the product itself to educate. There’s less and less emphasis on separate materials (such as manuals) to teach people how to use a product. Now, the expectation is that the product teaches you how to use itself. Today’s most “intuitive” designs are great examples of effective and discrete education.

The onboarding screen on mobile apps are trying to address the need to educate people on how the app works. via Elezea

With all that said, I would venture to guess that most designers don’t see their role having much to do with educating. Given the trajectory of digital product design, I would argue it’s now a core role. Most users start with no experience using a product. When the design succeeds, they learn how to use it appropriately and optimally. A lot of learning happens in between those points. A designer can either help that process along or leave it up to the end user to learn (or not learn) on their own.

I wonder how the trade would change if designers embraced the educator role. I personally believe it significantly changes the designer’s de facto training and professional focus. The focus of communication would lean more heavily on clarity and cognition rather than aesthetic.

I’m still trying to match what Lefty was able to do with all our years working together. As the years go by, I feel like I should have spent more time trying to translate what he did with me than obsessing over kerning and negative space. I want to teach people to throw a slider in one sentence.

Historically speaking, software has generally had a clear delineation between creator and consumer. The consumers vastly outnumbered the creators. Today a much larger percentage of the population is tinkering with code. The line between creator and consumer continues to blur. With today’s open source projects, specifically those where you’re working on top of it, there’s a whole new layer of contribution in the form of third-party developers. That community means everything to its relevance. The functionality of the actual product in open source software is as important as ever, but the experience of using/modifying the code behind it is now vital. Making it desirable to work with is as important as making it work.

Ruby on Rails is a good example of making an open source project desirable. The development team created a compelling framework with new, interesting approaches. It created a new, and in many ways better, approach to making web apps. Almost overnight you had a huge influx of developers writing Ruby just so they could use Rails.

So what do you do when the language behind a large open source project begins to age? If you stay the course there will be a slow bleed of talent as future generations of developers migrate to modern languages and frameworks. If you immediately shift to a new language, you will lose a huge segment of its most loyal and fervent supporters-in a sense, the elders.

Here’s how I would approach it. I would create offshoots of the project in different languages. I like to think of this approach as creating tributaries of the main “river”. These efforts would be run by small teams, focus primarily on core functionality and rely heavily on the contributions of outside communities to push the project forward. Each tributary may turn into its own river or dry up altogether. The learnings from each tributary would benefit everyone. As languages begin to die, they can be let go naturally. As others begin to grow, there can be more resources devoted to it. This approach allows a project’s community not feel like it’s “stuck” with a particular language or technology.

I particularly like this system because it gives an inroad for new groups of talented people to contribute. This opens up the door for more diversity of thinking and approaches to solving problems. In turn, it would likely lead to fragmentation. It would also piss a lot of people off in the core community. However, I believe the alternative of doing nothing eventually would be worse.

Languages can be very old and have vibrant communities around them… Until they don’t. This can happen very quickly and unexpectedly. Influential open source projects need to take a proactive role in keeping their product desirable for consumers and those who use it to create. Part of making it desirable is to keep it aligned and in pace with the zeitgeist of the next generation’s talent. Otherwise they’ll move on, and everyone else with them.

Everyone had left the room except for myself. I leaned over to her, told her I loved her, I knew she was dying and I would never see her again. I needed to have a honest, real, true moment with her. For us to share even a couple seconds where we acknowledged the finality of what the moment held and try to make sense of it. This would have been difficult and awkward. But it would have been worth it. Unfortunately, that moment never came. She said she’d be better tomorrow and that we’d talk soon.

We never spoke again. My best guess is that my Grandmother was trying to make me feel better by redirecting the conversation. She probably thought it would have been uncomfortable and unsettling, not to mention emotionally tough. Who knows. What I do know is that to this day I carry a deep regret that I was unable to have that exchange with her.

Meaningful human moments are born from pushing through challenges. Like most others, I all too often avoid these difficult moments. But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I sought out that opportunity with my Grandmother. I look back at my life and the most meaningful, important moments had something to do with forcing myself through situations like these. At the end of that push is accomplishment, failure, realization, clarity. Big, weighty, impactful things.

The path of least resistance is not always the best for us. Our bodies and psyches thrive on the right amount of friction. In the drive to remove all friction from peoples’ lives, I question how much good we are ultimately doing. Rather, I think we need to be creating healthy friction for people – the right amount in the right ways at the right times.

I look back at taking photographs in 2001 with a Nikkormat FT2. No auto-focus, no auto aperture, and about as basic of a light meter as you’ll find. It was friction embodied. It also ended up being one of the most formative presences in my creative life. I appreciate what the point-and-shoot and the iPhone have done to expand the popularity of photography by lowering (or debatably removing) its learning curve. Still, I wonder how much joy is lost by taking a great shot without the hand holding.

To that end, I think we need to focus less on making people’s lives easier and more on making people’s lives fuller. People thrive on challenge and accomplishment. This doesn’t happen without friction. Instead of removing all friction, we need to isolate meaningful opportunities for growth and guide them through it. This is not as easy of a sell as “we’ll do it for you”. There needs to be a clear understanding of why the friction is worth it and what’s in it for them in the end. The difference between a challenge and a hassle is that a challenge has a perceived promise of growth whereas a hassle seems difficult for no reason.

Looking back at the last moments with my Grandmother, it would have been easier for me to simply tell her that I was looking forward to recovery and that everything would be back to normal soon. But it would have been an hollow ending to our 34 years together. As designers, we have the opportunity to smooth out the rough edges of life. We also have the opportunity to create a path through them. It can be difficult to discern which is appropriate, but getting it right can mean everything.

Metaphors make ephemeral concepts tangible. It’s a very natural way to communicate. This approach was core to the Star Operating System and has stayed so to this day. It was a huge success.

Metaphors vicariously describe a concept, but they don’t directly articulate. Therefore a metaphor’s efficacy relies on both subjects maintaining their relation. Once that relation breaks, metaphor becomes idiom. Raining cats and dogs is an example of a outdated metaphor that no longer makes sense. Idioms are a nightmare for people trying to learn a new language because they seem like nonsense to the outsider.

There’s also a relatively new problem with metaphors—they don’t last as long as they used to. The world is changing so quickly (especially in the digital world) that metaphors are losing their relevance sooner. Since metaphors rely on both subjects maintaining their relation, change is a metaphor’s greatest enemy.

My Gripe With the Save Icon

The save icon is essentially an idiom in the form of an icon. It once made sense and no longer holds any relevant meaning to people under 30. Idioms are a bad way to communicate if your goal is clarity and universality. The core purpose of an icon is clarity and universality. This is a problem. There are times when an idiom can be a fun, quirky way to get a point across, but it has no place for one of the core functions of computing.

Save designed by Cris Dobbins from The Noun Project

As soon as an icon becomes the visual equivalent of an idiom, its form has no decipherable meaning to those without context. Even worse, its form has no relevance to its the subject. In my opinion, this makes it objectively bad. The save icon is a great icon for floppy disk, not so much for save.

That’s my main gripe with using metaphors for icons, but there are other problems. For instance, once you use something else to describe a concept, there’s nothing stopping you from using that something else to describe another concept. Clear as mud? OK, let’s just jump to an example. We use the magnifying glass to communicate search.

Search designed by Egor Culcea from The Noun Project

But we also use it to communicate zoom in/out.

Zoom designed by Egor Culcea from The Noun Project

We use the magnifying glass to communicate two entirely different concepts. On their own, they work (although I always thought the magnifying glass for search was a stretch), but as a part of a system they break down. This is the equivalent of to, too and two in the English language.

That’s my problem with metaphors, they make a lot of sense in the short term and for a single solution, but in a broader, longer view, they begin to break down. My guess is that we will have more icons with problems similar to the save icon in the years to come.

Here’s the snag. Designing entirely symbolic visual representations for abstract concepts is really hard. For every success, there are a multitude of failures. Metaphors have less of a cognitive learning curve than abstract icons. I don’t think we should stop using them,but I think we need to be aware of their pitfalls and make the necessary adjustments.

Metaphors in our interfaces will need constant maintenance and updating. My main issue with the save icon is that we let it become an idiom. While I would still have philosophical issues with using a modern storage device to communicate save, at least it would be within the realm of decency.

I still prefer meaningful symbols to metaphors to communicate abstract concepts. The radiation trefoil is a great example of a meaningful symbol. If I am right and metaphors begin to suffer reduced longevity, it’ll make symbolizing concepts all the more important.

In short, a good metaphor is a useful way to communicate an idea at a specific point in time. Not so great for a prolonged amount of time.

I am particularly happy to get 0.9.2 out because it finally frees us up to start working on 0.9.3 which is going to be a lot of fun. The theme for 0.9.3 is automation. We will be using Grunt to make theme setup, development and deployment more streamlined. We’ve already been picking away at it, but we’ll finally be able to dig into it with our entire focus.

Here’s the full list of changes for 0.9.2:

• Broke up the repository into two separate repos.
• Cleaned up the repo dramatically
• Added option to remove version URL parameter to enqueued scripts
• Added option to remove version URL parameter to enqueued styles
• Added option to remove WordPress version meta tag
• Converted main content div to the ‘main’ tag
• Fixed 404 template
• Added individual IDs for comments
• Made comments count in sidebar a link
• Fixed font size for unordered list within 3-up view
• Fixed pagination margins
• Fixed list line-height in content section UI
• Improved structure and organization of SCSS/CSS
• Increased optimization of SCSS/CSS
• Broke up global.scss into smaller modules
• Text input placeholder replacements for IE
• Made the removal of script/style version URL parameter optional
• Moved core Javascript into parent theme (not included by default)
• Added simple image deferring Javascript (not included by default)
• Added French translation
• Added Polish translation

San Francisco is an example of where society is outpacing its habitat. While San Francisco and other urban dwellings are experiencing this phenomenon now, it’s only a matter of time until every town and suburb goes through the same phenomenon. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how we got here. Making any significant infrastructural modification takes considerable time, money and will. The amount of disruption of daily life for its residents would be considerable. On the occasions where projects like these fail, it becomes harder for future projects.

While this may be quaint, it’s absolutely stupid. Photo by Michael Patterson

Civil engineering is nothing like software engineering, but both professions face similar challenges. As the things they make age and complexity gets layered on, it becomes hard to make even the smallest changes. Any foundational modifications often lead to instability. It gets to the point where the team just wants to keep things running as-is because anything else would be risky and expensive. The great thing about software is its intangible existence. Old code can be scrapped and re-written at a relatively low cost. In comparison, if the city of New York wanted to retrofit Brooklyn, they couldn’t start by leveling it. That difference is one of the key ingredients of how the world of software has kept up (and even accelerated) the rate of advancement while many sectors that have a physical component to them are just trying to keep up.

Our cities are embarrassingly behind in the most basic technologies. There is only so much commercial products and services can do. This gap is only going to expand at an accelerating rate. At some point cities will begin to hold back its population. This is a serious problem.

So how can we solve this? I would like to see a start-from-scratch approach by building a prototype city built entirely on new technologies and new approaches in urban design. Each city would be relatively small in area and population—let’s say 4 square miles in area. Each prototype city would work to solve weighty urban issues in different ways based on the needs of their region. For instance, you probably wouldn’t want to create a solar-powered city in Seattle.

What’s the modern equivalent to the stereotypical 1950′s “City of Tomorrow”?

These prototype cities would provide an unconstrained vision of how cities could function. This would provide a much clearer view of how certain new technologies/approaches impact a community (for better or worse). They would also provide an avenue for technology companies to envision ambitious ideas with considerably less friction. Most importantly, these prototype cities would provide a blueprint for existing cities on how to (or how not to) approach modernizing their infrastructure to reduce the amount of risk when they choose to do so.

One focus for a prototype city could be the emerging technology of autonomous vehicles. At this point, the autonomous vehicle has had to work around laws and infrastructure that never planned to support them. Imagine how much better autonomous vehicles could operate with roads designed specifically for them. Would road signs have machine-readable information printed on them? Would they have different speed limits? Their own partitioned roads? How would a society work differently in this scenario? We can all take guesses on how autonomous vehicles would impact urban life or we can actually have it play out and apply those learnings to modernizing the rest of our cities.

What would a city look like if these were the only cars on the road? Photo by Scott Schrantz.

The autonomous vehicle is a perfect example of a technology that is almost assuredly going to become mainstream, have a dramatic impact on our society and require a significant adjustment on the city, state and national levels of government. I can guarantee you that the transition will be challenging, no matter what we do. If we just try to wing it and institute national standards without a model to work from, it’s going to be a mess. I can think of countless other technologies that will have a similar impact. We need to employ a [test, measure, adjust] approach to problems this large and complex. As long as cities are taking a reactionary approach to technology, any modernization efforts will be hacks.

We could also use this approach during recovery efforts of cities hit by disasters. Think hurricane Katrina or Sandy. We could use those disasters as opportunities to rebuild our towns/cities with forward-looking approaches and technologies. Think of a recovery process where as many technologists show up as engineers. Cities/towns hit by a disaster could have the opportunity to not just rebuild but re-imagine.

In many ways, America feels old, timid and tired. The country that created the Interstate system and the Apollo program has lost either the confidence, the will or both to create new, ambitious public infrastructures. The result is a portfolio of old and outdated cities. It is necessary for our existing cities to improve their infrastructure, but the process is far too incremental and compromised to provide a guiding direction of where America’s cities should head. Government shouldn’t be the only source of innovation, but it can’t shy away from it either. The private sector can’t and shouldn’t modernize our cities. We need government-generated innovation; a NASA for civil engineering if you will. Without such an initiative, our public spaces will always be uninspiringly behind.

What We Come Back To

I often look back at the things that stay present in my mind through the years. The things that I keep coming back to. Most of the things on that list I would not immediately be described as simple. They may be simple to use/learn/consume, but that’s not why I keep coming back to them. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The things I keep coming back to have immense depth—they encourage a long-term relationship because there is so much to it.

I have a deep love for the game of baseball. I started playing as a child. I went to my college specifically to play baseball. The game is now one of the most cherished experiences my wife and I share together. I stopped following the game for a stretch of 5 years, but I came back to it. I have listened to countless games and have played innumerable innings and I never grown tired of it. I feel like there’s still so much to learn and experience.

Baseball has had a formative and permanent impact on my life. Not because it was simple or easy to pick up, but because of the nuance and details—enough to devote a lifetime to fully learn. It’s those kinds of experiences that create life-long love affairs. Simple is an admirable quality, but alone it provides transient convenience. Profound is timeless, remembered. Profound shapes people’s lives.

Profundus

The word profound stems from the Latin word profundus, which has a broader meaning than its descendent. I found this definition in particular interesting:

1. deep, profound
2. intense, extreme, profound; immoderate
3. boundless, vast; bottomless
4. thick, dense
5. obscure, unknown, mysterious

What I love about this definition is that it paints a more accurate, well-rounded picture of something with depth. The profound is often dense, obscure and complex—it’s in its nature. It’s that density and complexity which makes something with depth less accessible. The end result is often something not immediately approachable and often has a considerable learning curve. This is normally seen as an impediment, but it also presents a compelling opportunity. A steep learning curve, balanced by the promise of a meaningful return can lead to long-term personal investment and result in a real sense of accomplishment. These are experiences we remember.

Profound is Timeless

Designing a profound experience is by no means trivial—we’d all be lucky to do it once in our life. our meaningful experiences are deeply personal and highly subjective. Focusing on convenience is considerably easier and less risky. However, their shallow focus makes them less crucial to our lives. If you design something that’s easy, most will like it—until the next thing comes along. If you design something that’s meaningful, some will love it—and remember it. The things that last are profound.

I noticed an interesting pattern, through almost all those individual arguments. Very few, if any described the current Save icon as being good. There were plenty of mentions of it being established, understood, standard, etc. But rarely, if ever, referred to as good. The sense I was getting was, “Yeah, it’s old and kind of silly, but it works. If it’s not broken, why fix it? Imperfect as it may be, we’re stuck with it”.

First and foremost, the Save icon is broken. Objectively broken. I won’t go into the details of that in this article; I’ll be writing more about that in the near future. Initially, my interest in redesigning the Save icon was purely due to the fact that the design is not clearly communicating the concept of “save” and that it can be made better. However, after reading through the meta-discussion, I think it’s important to redesign the icon just to dispel the idea that we are somehow stuck with the current icon or with anything for that matter. Nothing is forcing us to continue to use an antiquated design and we shouldn’t feel beholden to some tenured relic that’s only redeeming quality is it just happened to be around before anything else. We’re not talking about legislation or physical infrastructure. We’re talking about the most fluid, dynamic medium around – information. If we can’t redesign a stupid icon, how can we expect to change serious things.

The aforementioned arguments for keeping the old floppy disk around aren’t new. It’s the same basic argument that has kept the imperial unit system around in America. Replacing an established standard isn’t easy. People won’t like it—mainly because it has the unfortunate quality of being different. That dreaded learning curve of “different” often scares people towards safer paths. Yes, new things need to be learned. But learning is a basic function of the human experience. The goal should be to make something worth learning. By avoiding tackling old, outdated and flawed standards, we are missing out on meaningful design challenges.

I am convinced we can make a better Save icon. It’ll be hard, but I truly think a symbol can be made which more accurately, elegantly and timelessly communicates the concept. I’m also convinced we can make a lot of other things better—really important things. However, many of those things have established norms that aren’t going to be particularly easy to replace. That’s the risk. If we succeed, the reward is the chance to make profound impacts.

The age or establishment of something shouldn’t preclude it from scrutiny and/or replacement. If anything, that should make us all the more eager to pull it down from its pedestal. Our job is to make things better—or at least try to do so. The Save icon is not good enough. We should try to make it better.

Speaking of breaking the bank, this leads directly to the Leica M9. The Leica rangefinder is nearly a perfect fit for my photography preferences. Leica’s M mount collection consists entirely of manual, prime lenses. Many of these lenses are amazingly small and produce some of the best quality possible (in the right hands). In short, Leica image quality is legendary. The problem is that these cameras are notoriously expensive. A new M9 goes for roughly $7,000 and their lenses range between $1,300 and $10,000. I have wanted to shoot with a Leica for nearly a decade. I decided that if I couldn’t buy one, I could rent one for a week. Since the rental service didn’t offer the 50mm Summicron lens I was interested in, I got the 50mm Summarit.

So why am I writing about a 4 year old camera when there are countless articles written by far more experienced/credible people taking photos? Well, from everything I can tell, the people reading this blog are not professional photographers and may not have even heard of Leica prior to this post. I felt it would be a way to expose a group of people into a completely unique photographic device, and why it’s an amazing camera.

It turned out renting the M9 was a very bad decision because after using it for a week, it has been painful to go back. The camera met my expectations in image quality (even with their “worst” lens) and far exceeded my expectations with everything else. If you know anything about Leica, you simply expect a properly captured photo to look amazing, but it’s hard to quantify the “small things” about using a Leica until you actually use it.

My Impressions

Image Quality

I went out with the M9 and my D700 on the first day to compare results. I intentionally did not compare the photos pixel for pixel; I just wanted a high-level comparison. I didn’t see drastically sharper images from the M9/Summarit than I got from my D700/Nikkor f1.4. The Summarit may have been sharper, but the Nikkor f1.4 was sharp enough. The big difference was the natural contrast and tones that the Summarit delivered. The colors and contrast already felt right.

Many times, I would import the M9 photos into Lightroom and the images wouldn’t need any adjustments. As someone who constantly is fiddling with the RAW files from my D700, this blew me away. It’s hard for me to explain how the M9 photos felt right, they just did. Additionally, the contrast delivered straight from the lens was not something I was able to replicate in my D700 photos by simply increasing the contrast once in Lightroom.

One important note is that the M9′s sensor delivers notoriously poor image quality at high ISO. I think I shot one photo at ISO 1600 just to see for myself. The Leica delivered as promised. This was one area where my D700 blew it away hands down.

Focusing & Framing

Setting up a shot with a rangefinder is quite different than with the SLR. I don’t want to go into the gory details of the differences between SLR and rangefinder viewfinders because that could take a whole article. The gist is that a rangefinder’s viewfinder’s view is independent of the lens on the camera. This video concisely describes the M9′s viewfinder:

I loved the ability to see what was outside of the shot because it gave me greater awareness of my surroundings. After going back to shooting with my SLR, I felt like I had tunnel vision. The rangefinder framing process felt more flexible – I could keep the camera up to my eye and still have a general understanding of what was going on around me.

Focusing took 15 minutes to feel natural and so much better than my D700. It’s important to note that the D700 is not designed for manual photography. In many regards, I was very happy that Nikon provided any manual focus options to begin with. However, you can quickly tell that the feature is not a top priority. I could go on for paragraphs as to how the manual focus mechanism on the D700 is sub-optimal, but this article is about the M9. Suffice to say that a camera designed for manual focus will be better at manual focus.

Ergonomics

The body of the M9 feels more solid than the D700 (a difficult feat) and it considerably smaller and lighter (roughly 2/3 the weight of the D700). The M9 doesn’t have any rubberized areas and it can feel quite slick. This intermittently scared the hell out of me since there were times when I felt I could drop it. The body doesn’t have a built in handgrip, which I’m OK with, but I’d never carry the camera without a strap around my shoulder. The M9 camera body may not be ergonomic in shape, but due to its smaller shape and lighter weight, it still feels great in the hand.

Shooting Feel

What grabbed me the most about the Leica is the quality with the highest subjectivity. The overall feel of the Leica, specifically its size/weight and incredibly quiet shutter, made it the most enjoyable camera I’ve ever shot with. The camera and its lenses are so small that I found unsuspecting subjects were not intimidated when I pointed it at them. I could frequently get away with people not even knowing that I took a photo of them because it was so silent.

The poor-quality preview screen had the interesting side effect of stopping me from chimping every time I took a photo. I spent less time worrying about the photos I had already taken and worrying more about capturing the next shot. This feeling was magnified by the fact that I knew the camera would deliver a great photo if I held my end of the bargain (nailing the focus, not pointing the camera directly at the sun, etc.). It was a wonderful feeling to know that I was the bottleneck for every shot I took.

Rent One. Seriously.

I ended up loving the M9 for the way it let me take photos as much as the photos it produced. On the surface, the camera is tremendously overpriced, but it provides an entirely unique shooting experience. In a way, you are paying for what the camera allows you to experience rather than what it can do for you.

The site saw a pretty large spike of traffic (we’re not talking Reddit or Hacker News scale, but still significant). The results exceeded my expectations.

App.net is betting that a paid model and a promise to its customers will ensure that it will stay financially viable and customer/developer friendly. I have my doubts. I do not think enough people are willing to pay for a status update service, making the long-term interest in third-party development for the platform questionable. My other concern is that promises, no matter how genuine in intent, mean nothing. App.net could get acquired (no longer making it their choice to make), they may need to adjust their business model, or shift their product focus entirely. Each of these scenarios could force App.net to change their policy. App.net’s first priority is to keep the lights on. That would likely supersede any promise made to its customers.

These issues are not exclusive to App.net. They exist for any company in this business. It’s for these reasons I believe any proprietary, centralized service for status updates is ultimately flawed. The walled garden approach is beneficial for incubating emerging technologies, but once those technologies mature, the closed environment stifles progress. Look at the cable industry. Look at the wireless industry. The status update has reached the level of utilization that demands a decentralized, open standard as its foundation. Services like Twitter and App.net can still be valuable acting as the icing on the cake. When Dalton Caldwell shared his idea for App.net he used Github as a shining example of how a service should operate. I agree. The difference so far between App.net and Github is that Github is a service which enhances an open/standard technology and App.net is not.

The good news is that there are emerging standards for sending and receiving status updates. OStatus seems to be the most widely adopted with RStatus, Identi.ca and Status.net all supporting it. Due to the services’ OStatus support, each network can communicate, follow and interact with each other. Can you imagine if you had to sign up for Gmail to get emails from other Gmail users? Would email have become the pervasive communication medium if it wasn’t based on a standard/open protocol? Of course not. It shocks me that we are still dependent on one or two primary services to broadcast status updates to an audience. I would like to see App.net support an emerging standard for status updates (such as OStatus) and then build a premium service on top of it. I would gladly pay $100/year for that, especially if I could guarantee (beyond a promise) that my content and connections would never be walled in. Considering App.net’s momentum, they could provide a significant podium to promote the support of a standard.

Twitter helped pioneer status updates and microblogging. They were so successful that the idea has outgrown the company. The communication medium is so big, that no single company or collection of companies can do it service. App.net can be a valuable piece of the puzzle, but to expect it to be the alternative to Twitter is setting them up for failure and setting us up for disappointment. This issue is begging for a standardized solution—one I hope App.net helps push forward.

The written word on the internet disposable. When objects become disposable, creators are less inclined to concern themselves with quality. My guess is the rise in short-form blogging (ala kottke.org, PSFK, etc.) is due to this disposable culture. I enjoy both blogs, but they do not satisfy the itch for in-depth content. Writing on the web is increasingly focused on quantity rather than quality.

When was the last time you went back and updated a blog post from a few months ago? I’m assuming rarely; likely never. I have plenty of blog posts where the subject matter is still very relevant, but I am never gone back to make them better. In contrast, when was the last time you updated a code library to fix a bug or add a new feature? Monthly? Weekly? Daily? We have long-term relationships with code. We fix it, improve upon it. We work on it with our peers. Due to that reality, we feel much more comfortable sharing something basic with the intention to iterate—often with community feedback and support. I love writing code for this very reason.

I love sharing ideas, but I hate writing. Mainly because it feels so different from coding. When I write for my blog, it is normally a solitary process where I try my damnedest to dot every i and cross every t. I publish and then I move on. I have tried to create more collaborative processes, but the tools are just not there yet.

Ideas are not cheap, but we certainly treat them cheaply. A modern platform is needed for to enable writing in the same iterative, collaborative process we have for design and development. I know I am not alone in this opinion. Two years ago, I wrote about this subject and mentioned how writing tools should feel more like source control. A year and a half later, a writer for Wired wrote an article with Github.

If we want writers to put more time into their content, the process needs to change dramatically. First, the all-or-nothing approach to posting needs to change. I would love an article to start off as a public draft where I get initial feedback and measure the general interest in the subject. From there, the article can grow, shift and evolve as necessary. Secondly, our articles need to have a much longer half-life. If I make a serious improvement or update to a past blog post, I want to feel confident that people will actually read it. I am tired of forcing myself to finish a blog post that you nor I will never make better and you will never read again. Our ideas should not be disposable and the right tools could go a long way to fix this problem.