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💥 BREAKING NEWS: The High Pony has been averaging a 55% open rate this entire year. Last week we hit 59%! THANK YOU, readers. This is unheard of. The average open rate for newsletters is around 25%. I am so grateful for all of you hangin with me week after week. Here we go! 🚀 💥
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User-Centric Means Labor-Invisible
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Digital platforms are user-centric. They're based around enhancing the user experience. EVERYTHING is about the user. But, what about the labor that goes into maintaining that user experience? Where does that fit into the user experience? In short, it doesn't. (see: "What I'm Watching" for more on what "doesn't fit).
User-centricity obfuscates the labor that goes into providing seamless experiences for online shoppers. Compare this to, say, an IRL store where customers interact with employees who run to the back to get a different size or check out your groceries. Not to romanticize that experience, but at least there's a human interaction. You've gotta work hard to not see the employee. It can be done. And, humans have made it their jobby job to do exactly that. But, it's on you to do the work.
Retail and service apps take the work of dehumanizing and whisk it away. In an effort to be "friction-free" and "intuitive," digital retail and service platforms, though still dependent on manual labor, intentionally hide labor from the user experience, effectively making invisible the working class.
This, in full disclosure, is not something I've previously considered. While my critique of online shopping has "hovered" around the topic of "lack of human interaction," mostly I'm vexing on having to return sneakers that rarely fit cuz digital and subsequently finding myself on a lame newsletter. But, this week I read Kevin Slavin's heady 2016 article "Design as Participation" and it got me thinking about all the things.
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"[A]s designers construct these systems, what of the systems that interact with those systems [of labor]? What about systems of local commerce and the civic engagement that is predicated upon it? Or the systems of unions that emerged after generations of labor struggles? Or the systems that provided compensation for some reasonable number of artists? When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? The lens of the user obscures the view of the ecosystems it affects."
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I'm pretty neg on apps being able to change our world for the better. But, I'm finding it somewhat pleasurable to think about how an app that provides a retail service would look and function if it were to include the labor force that goes into packaging the materials I buy.
📦
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🚨 And Now.... A New Class! 🚨
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Reeeeeally excited to be teaching this 4-week course on building a zettelkasten.
Building a Zettelkasten for Creative Expression is a 4-week course on how to build out, implement, and use a zettelkasten for writing. There will be two sessions per week: one 1.5–2 hour didactic session (lecture with Q&A) and one 1-hour “open studio” session where students can get feedback on their assignments. These sessions are designed to help you create a dynamic, linked-thought knowledge system that will continue to expand, morph, and grow for years, providing you with endless digital reams of written material..
Lots of information on the landing page, so please CLICK HERE
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Me, My Newsletter, and PKM: An Interview
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My comrade in progressive PKM, Guia Carmona, interviewed me on all things writing and knowledge management. If you wanna know what I really think about what I do and what I'm getting into these days, click the pic!
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Friction-Free and Spare Time to Do More
One of the inherent design flaws in a friction-free existence seems to be that, while it does leave us with more free time, it coerces us into using that free time to maintain our friction-free existence.
"Many have hoped that as a process becomes more efficient we would invest fewer resources into it. But in fact greater efficiency leads to new viable applications and an increased demand for inputs.
"In general it's a mistake to increase the efficiency of some aspect of your life unless you want the thing you're optimizing to actually take up more of your life."
Friction-free defs gives you room to do more. Only problem is that it takes more to create more.
http://www.ja3k.com/blog/onid.html
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A Time Before the Censors
I often find it hard to imagine a world that isn't this one. As if we've never felt a different way or will never feel different in the future. This article, "What is Pre-Code Hollywood," which admittedly has nothing to do with that, is a great reminder that what we see and experience is largely based on the choices of those who came before us.
"The fascination with pre-Code films often comes from how openly suggestive and fun the majority of films that compromised those seven years are."
Right now you're like "Wha—?" I know. Basically, this is an article about a tiny window of time back in the early 20th c. before the censors got a hold of Hollywood and reigned them in (for good reason, see racism and misogyny, for bad reasons, see: anti LGBTQ, etc). For me, I was simply surprised that there was ever a time when Hollywood wasn't bound by top-down mores.
https://pre-code.com/what-is-pre-code-hollywood/
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WHAT I'M LOVING
It's my birthday month. Love me. ♉️
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WHAT I'M TRACKING
I feel like this is important, but I don't know why yet:
"[T]he mammalian brain stores a single memory across a widely distributed, functionally connected complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or even a few places."
https://news.mit.edu/2022/single-memory-stored-across-many-connected-brain-regions-0502
The work I'm involved in these days is heavy on "linked thought" through the use of text-editing platforms like Obsidian. Here's a portion of what my linked thought looks like, a snapshot of how all my amazing ideas interact with one another. Dots are thoughts (<— who needs a new band name?):
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WHY I'M VEXING
Why do you think? Republicans watch The Handmaid's Tale and see a blueprint, while everyone else sees a horrifying, dystopian, and increasingly more likely future. This criminal outfit, called "the right," which for the last twenty nine years has not been able to convince the US public that they should serve in the executive branch (see: popular vote), has zero credibility, and should be stripped of their right to participate in the political process.
Just let that sink in: For almost thirty years the majority of Americans have voted against having Republicans at the highest level of government. And yet, this criminal minority continues to dictate legislation that ruptures the fabric of society.
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WHAT I'M PRACTICING
Restraint when it comes to looking up far away properties on Zillow. There's problems everywhere. I just wanna break from ours.
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WITH WHOM I'M CONNECTING
My new Tweeter followers. I have 40. Speaking of which, I'm experimenting with using that platform for a very specific subject: PKM through a cultural, practical, and Bob Doto interests lens. I'm hoping that will make the experience much less icky.
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WHAT I'M HEARING
P.E.'s 2020 dance-skronk jam, "Top Ticket."
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Harvey continued to get increasingly confrontational with every visit. Here, the confrontation with the Spectacle increases:
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Eventually, the confrontation with the Spectacle comes to a head and Harvey is told he'll never come back (though years later he did return):
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Here's what I see: In a Spectacular world—a world based on the exchange of human-brands and the recuperation of all dissent from said branding—any human that tries to assert its authenticity and break free from the Spectacle comes off as ugly and violent, a mirroring of the Spectacle itself.
In media, the human simply does not fit.
Also, watch American Splendor, with Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar. It's one of my favorite biopics.
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And, that's that! See ya next week.
Please share this newsletter far and wide. Without social media, you are my reach out into the world. Help me extend my reach.
What people are saying:
"It's one of my favorite things to see in my Inbox." —JS
"I love everything you speak on!" —MA
"I'm fine with it." —MG
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