Media is everywhere. Literally. Everywhere. It’s a tricky thing. Teachers will passionately tell us that this is the Holy Grail, the Million Dollar Question: How can we teach kids to be discriminating about information so that they grow up to be sophisticated, discerning and informed grown-ups? Imagine this for some context: If we’d only just…
Category: inquiry
Who Needs Empathy?
<riff> Who needs empathy? What value is there to the exercise of displacing ourselves from our situation for a moment to try and experience the world from a completely different point of view? Is that something any of us average people in the West can even do if we tried? Even if it is, why…
Powered by Touch
Last night, in a dream of all things, I was reminded of a very real encounter that changed my perception for so much the better. I wrote about it then, almost 4 years ago, but I am moving my fingers across the keyboard now, re-posting it here to keep it fresh in memory. Okay, so…
The Future of Technology Operations
Since I last wrote about it, Technology Operations (TechOps for short) has evolved. Particularly Development Operations, or DevOps for short, has become widely adopted + continues to evolve, coupled with new technologies that have been directly influenced by it + the culture it has helped shape. Even though many organizations are still struggling to realise…
The Underrated Power of Lists.
Like making lists? Me, too. Even though my lists may not look like lists in the traditional sense, they still serve a pretty cool purpose.
TAG, you’re it.
Yesterday was kind of a big deal, celebrated quietly inside my own heart. It was the 10th anniversary of the day I completed a labor of love that changed my life for so much the better.
Restoring Curiosity – The Hacker Manifesto
Remember being little and curious? It’s not too late to get it back.
IoT, IIoT + Reality
While the future of technology is usually exciting, it’s also important to temper so much hype with some healthy reality and practical, thoughtful and intentional consideration.
Specialization is for insects.
In his novel, Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein wrote the ultimate creedo for the human race.
Teaching Fish To Swim
If you’re trying to teach fish how to swim, it helps if you put them in the water.
Peter Gabriel is right about jargon
Generally speaking, don’t use jargon. Just, don’t.
Experience
Experience is the move.
More Gratitude for Postman and McLuhan
Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who was associated with NYU for forty years. He wrote countless articles, papers and seventeen books. Though my personal favorite is Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Neil is best known for his 1985 book about television, Amusing…
DIY vs. DIT – Part II: Decentralization and Dismantling Silos
The first part of this post built an analogy, that centralization is like DIY (Do-it-Yourself) and decentralization is like DIT (Do-it-Together).
If we can agree on that analogy, simply for the sake of conversation, then we can take it a step further by looking through that lens into some specific contexts where this approach can add value to our efforts by breaking down our silos.
The Military, Vultures + Residential Remodeling – unlikely lessons in UX
Before I moved to the State of Abe a few years ago, I lived in Juneau, Alaska. From time-to-time, I worked with military personnel, most often legal counsel, the types that handle deals to procure real estate on which to build things, all kinds of things, from barracks to administrative offices, training facilities and storage…
“Do It Yourself” (DIY) vs. “Do It Together” (DIT)
CENTRALIZATION = DIY Once upon a time, at the beginning of the online world of the Internet, it was our goal with technology and business to silo and centralize everything in its own container. From software installations, information security tools and strategies, design teams, distribution systems and supply chains of all kinds, and also our…
On Being Prepared
It’s not a big secret. Organizations need to be much more proactive about security. Firewalls and antivirus are not a plan anymore, they are doors and windows that can and will be circumvented. Expecting that attackers will simply stay off of your network is foolish. No one knows the moment they’ve been hacked. They find…
Stepdadding: verb.
Stepdadding (sp?) is, without a doubt, one of the most challenging things I have ever taken on in my life. Here’s a part of my stepdad story. An off-the-top-of-my-head inventory of past experiences I draw insights from almost every day in my quest to be a solid stepdad? The list includes experiences like this: Designing…
VR, AR + MR: Designing the New Reality Experience
UPDATE: this post was refined and published on InVision’s blog on March 6, 2017. You can read that version here. Seven days after the release of Pokémon Go, more than 65 million people were playing it. SIXY-FIVE MILLION PEOPLE. How many people live in your whole town? County? State? Here’s some perspective: in the whole…
Trends, once, again.
Change is a big theme this time of year, the only time we seem to be collectively on board with change is now, at the changing of the calendar. Oh, funny life. In any case, we all enjoy taking a look back, and a look forward, at trends, methods, tools and strategies that worked well,…
Show up. Do your best.
This is the best advice I’ve ever received. It’s so good and I am so grateful, it is the only advice I ever offer. Not surprisingly, it’s transmitted directly and indirectly by some of the greatest characters in fiction. I offer it to my 5-year-old each day when I drop him at school. He answers…
Snowden, Privacy and Educating an Entire Culture on How Things Actually Work
I spent some free time this past weekend going to see Oliver Stone’s latest, Snowden, the wild tale of a talented technologist who trades his stable life for something larger than himself. Say what you want about all of this, I am of the opinion that Snowden acted from a place of earnestness at great…
In the not-too-distant future
I will describe keyboards to my son one day in a not-too-distant future when he asks about them. That is when he and I will ask the computer to show us some examples. We will spend a rainy afternoon making make-believe keyboards (QWERTY and Dvorak) out of cardboard and crayons and pretend to type in…
Living With Dementia
Mom passed away three years ago today. After initially being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, it was a few months later, at the University of Iowa Hospitals, when she was diagnosed with vascular dementia. As her world (and ours) fell apart, I realized that Mom’s behavior suddenly made perfect sense. I also became startlingly aware that,…