hungry&foolish

Solving Problems vs Identifying Opportunities

...sometimes things can irritate you so you become aware of a problem, which is a very pragmatic approach and the least challenging. What is more difficult is when you are intrigued by an opportunity. That, I think, really exercises the skills of a designer. It’s not a problem you’re aware or, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions, what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? This creates opportunities that could replace entire categories of device, rather than tactically responding to an individual problem. That’s the real challenge, and that’s what is exciting.

- Jonathan Ive, in an interview for the London Evening Standard

For The Times They Are A-Changin'

People who work in tech take it for granted that every major industry has already or will at some point be disrupted. Those of us who spend our days in this industry see the decreasing cost infrastructure, the democratization of publishing, the connections between people enabled by networks, the proliferation of mobile technology, and the lower barriers to content creation as harbingers of inevitable, irrefutable change that will leave nothing in our society untouched.

Because I see this future as a certainty, I find it surreal to watch someone come to grips with this change as they realize it has arrived on their doorstep. As the tech industry celebrates it's victories against PIPA and SOPA this week, Chris Dodd and the  MPAA are coming to grips with their new reality:

"The startlingly speedy collapse of the antipiracy campaign by some of Washington’s savviest players — not just the motion picture association, but also the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Recording Industry Association of America — signaled deep changes in antipiracy lobbying in the future. By Mr. Dodd’s account, no Washington player can safely assume that a well-wired, heavily financed legislative program is safe from a sudden burst of Web-driven populism."

If Dodd is exemplary of others in the political scene, I think we'll look back and see that what happened with PIPA and SOPA was a wakeup call that a populace linked by highly connected, near real time communication networks can't ignored. Politicians in the Arab Spring countries had to come to terms with this months ago, but I think PIPA/SOPA may be the first strong sign that the political system in our country will not be immune to the effects of those same forces.

I can't help but think about the lyrics in that Bob Dylan song:

"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."

Craftsmanship

Because of the association with hand made goods, it is tempting to think of craftsmanship as a quaint value from days long gone. I believe it's a value that we need more of in software and technology, and craftsmanship is one of the things that motivates me as a designer.

Steve said it better:

"There’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product...

Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic."

- Steve Jobs via Daring Fireball

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo