I’ve been in less of a mood to write lately. While I enjoy it, I question how important my views are in a world that seems to be losing the forest for the trees in terms of design sensibilities & overall approach.
It gets particularly depleting when a design choice you object to being force onto you by people who did not understand the problems with it blame you when exactly what you warned about happens.
The more I see, the more I realize technical communication with non-tech execs is only possible when both appreciate the value of each other’s knowledge. No amount of preaching about viewing IT as infrastucture & not a cost-center good for contracting out… nor how efficiency for all is the goal, not the look of a new flashy but cumbersome UI control ignorant of the use paradigm.
But there are bright spots in the emerging field of VR & AR. I remember talking to a friend when Apple opened up iOS for 3rd-party devs. We said it’d be cool to use your phone to spot invisible aliens & fight them with friends. I still think there is a market for this sort of real world alternate world. Where a “they live” inspired pair of AR goggles allows you to see what alien invaders see. It would be awesome if the game was based on that movie & you get to be part of a resistance movement.
But I digress. The reason I’m writing now is because I found yet another site I hate: a cobweb site. (For the unwashed, a “cobweb” is a web site that hasn’t been updated in some time. While I rarely tweak static pages & don’t blame others not to, I do appreciate a blog that continues to evolve, and basically feels like more of a person than a brand. So, I have written about whatever gets my attention. But des the web need “think pieces” by an unknown?
What have I contributed to the tech community? Not much on the enduring or public side. Sadly, my best work is owned by former employers. I doubt many of them know what they have. I have efficiency features I wrote into an app for a few companies that still hasn’t made it to the web yet, despite being less than 10 lines of HTML/CSS/jQuery. But maybe someday I’ll release a public version of this as an extension.
But unless I feel like something must be said. I’ll be saying less. But I want people to know—despite the planned infrequency due to the above & other factors—If I feel like contributing, maybe it’ll be a little invention or networking device. Who knows? I have a lot of ideas. But this is not a cobweb site at this time. I simply have nothing to say.