September 16, 2022

s12e52: And Everything's Burning To The Ground

0.0 Context Setting

It's the afternoon on Friday, September 16, 2022 and I am still easing back into things after the very long trip to the Elizabethan era.

Here is a photograph of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' net art as part of the Media Networks exhibit at the Tate Modern:

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1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

Reasonable accommodations

I've written before¹ about the next frontier in disability accommodations in digital services being neurological conditions like ADHD and what I'll short hand as "positions on the spectrum".

So what caught my attention today was the news in Chicago Magazine² that long COVID is now the USA's 3rd leading neurological disorder. I'll recap quickly my train of thought:

• We design for disability because everyone benefits. Most people will have a period of disability during their lives.
• That's, say, around 24.8 million people in the U.S. potentially suffering from the neurological effects of Long COVID.
• If you weren't already considering and designing for neurological accommodations in your app/service/website or whatever, then you need to start doing it now.

Reasons to get ahead:

It might seem super far-fetched, but I'd like to imagine that at some point in the future, certain business practices will turn out to be found, in court, to discriminate against certain neurological disorders. These business practices are bad for everyone.

Another is that designing for foggy brain, for example, also helps everyone because, duh, everyone will have foggy brain at some point. This strikes me as a moment to make the case for designing in this way super clear and persuasive to leadership who might listen or be open. It'll take a long time, but this feels like an inflection point.

And yes, this is less "your app or website" and more "how your business works" and all that digital transformation guff. It's service design for foggy brains. There's one line for you.

Flickr

I am an internet old, so two things caught my attention because I am old:

a) Jessamyn owns Metafilter now, of which I have a lot of thoughts but not the time to write them down, but there's something in how certain geographies and tools become institutionalized and how they survive over time.

b) Flickr! Flickr is doing a new thing and it's virtual photography! Flickr is owned by Smugmug now, and I am totally supportive of this experiment/new direction in What It Means To Be A Website Or App Or Service That Organizes And Shares Pixel Data On The Internet because let's face it, "photo sharing website" doesn't really cut it anymore.

But this! This is interesting: it fires all of my photo-mode-in-video-game neurons, it's hilarious that the description of the category is "Virtual Photography / Machinima" because... do people even use the word Machinima even more? Aren't they just... videos people make?

Anyway. Flickr: do all the deals with Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo. Make your place the place for photos inside videogames. Presumably there's a whole play for whatever metaverse shit is supposed to happen, but I am going to ignore that because videogames, duh.

Alternatively, expect Flickr to trial this balloon and then have their lunch eaten by Twitch Stills or whatever by the end of this year.

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Okay, that's it!

How are you doing? It is going to be the weekend soon, which is exciting because I am about to head back into the world of Business Travel on Sunday.

Best,

Dan