Blogless

I recently had occasion to review a personal classic from Coding Horror, Desktopitis. The plot is basically this. Jeff Atwood calls out some random presenter for his (very) cluttered desktop. To wit:

Here’s Atwood, excerpted:

After the presentation, I ribbed him about his desktop…He said he considers the desktop dead space if it doesn’t have something on it. I think his exact words were “make the desktop work for you”. That’s a unique perspective. It’s more of a portal philosophy. Fill the desktop to the brim with tons of stuff that’s relevant to you, so it’s always at your fingertips.

I realize there’s no right answer. Some people strive for blank, zen-like desktops, and some people fill their desktop with as many icons, gadgets, and gewgaws as they can possibly jam in there. It’s a religious debate…But I still maintain that it’s unhealthy to turn the desktop into an artificial destination. It’s like the Las Vegas strip; no matter how many zany attractions they add, eventually visitors have to come to terms with the fact that they’ve arbitrarily chosen to build those attractions in the middle of a vast, inhospitable desert.

For my money, I just can’t figure out how you’d ever find anything on such a messy desktop. When I’m browsing a directory, I can sort, search and so on. It sort of reminds me of people who just have huge stacks of books and papers on their physical-world desktop, instead of in a (physical) filing system or on shelves. It’s a lot of clutter for what I can only imagine is a marginal-at-best gain in productivity.

That said, it is interesting to consider the perspective of keeping everything I might need right at hand as I review my productivity habits for early-year revision. I don’t think I’m persuaded, but it’s nice to hear a counter-argument from a (presumably) computer-savvy advocate of a (rare) alternate view.

There’s some repetition in the graphic, but it made me look. I’d like to see a list of what’s not censored.

Check out his other stuff, too.

I first learned about this article a little over a year ago. If you aren’t familiar you owe it to yourself to check it out.

At issue: Good.is asked some of the world’s most prominent futurists to explain why slowness might be as important to the future as speed. I’ve excerpted some of my favorite bits here:

Still from Tortoise Beats Hare by Tex Avery

Bruce Sterling

The science-fiction author Bruce Sterling says “pace layering”—the idea that different layers of a structure or a system move at different speeds—is an interesting notion when considering slowness, as it helps to explain the various rates of change associated with different sectors of society.

“The slow movement imagines itself to belong by rights to the cultural layer”—a slow-moving layer of society—“but it’s still in the layer of fashionable activism,” he says. “An earthquake is rapid and shocking, it seems, but the underlying forces are geologically slow. So it’s actually our perception of pacing that’s odd, not pacing itself.”

The value in slowness, according to Sterling, is that people take a lot of comfort in measuring themselves against things that change slowly. “If everything in our lifetime changed at the same pace that we ourselves changed, we would never understand our own maturity.”

John Maeda

Maeda sees the benefits of fast and slow: problem-solving “with dirty hands” at rapid speeds, as well as critical thinking and critical making at slow enough speeds to allow for the contemplation of the implications of art and design to the greater world.

Again, it’s about balance. And pacing. “You can’t sprint forever, but you can pull your pace down. I’m a jogger—a very slow runner. My runs help me reconnect to my body and re-sort the contents of my brain.”

For Maeda, the fundamental question becomes, “How do we slow down what matters the most and speed up what benefits change and progress? We don’t want to impede progress, but we are seeking reconnection to ourselves, to each other, and with the world.”

Alexander Rose

Rose importantly notes: “I think the slow movement is very First-World-urban-environment targeted. If you’re an agrarian human, slow food is actually your only option. So we need to be careful not to overly romanticize ‘slow’ in this way. There’s a balance between poverty and privilege.”

Zheng proposes that the phone could run on a battery that uses enzymes to generate electricity from carbohydrates.

From Zheng:

This is a client project for designing an eco friendly phone for Nokia. Throughout my research, I found that using a phone battery as a power source is very expensive, consumes valuable resources on manufacturing, presents a disposal problem and is harmful to the environment. The concept is using a bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment.

Via Core77.

I was discussing slide design with a colleague – specifically, the tendency of Powerpoint to kill good slide design – and remembered seeing these posted on Scott Hansen’s Blog ISO50 a while back. They were originally posted at Square America with the heading “It’s 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future (Scenes From An IBM Slide Presentation).” Here’s a small sample, but check out the full collection, too.

Via.