Blog – Page 15 – Sonya Ellen Mann

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Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Yet Another New Thing: Announcing Exolymph

Posted on December 18, 2015December 18, 2015 by Sonya Mann

I just sent the email below to my newsletter subscribers. You should join their ranks! Because I want you to! That’s a good reason, right?

Dear everyone,

I am a serial project-starter. I always tell myself, “This is the last time! From now on I’m just going to concentrate on my own website!” But no, I’m incapable of doing that. I suppose it’s okay. Eventually I’ll hit pay dirt (ugh, I really hope so). Tradeoffs Press is still live, sort of, but I’ve lost steam. Balm Digest continues to exist, in a weird new form, albeit neglected — no steam there either.

Actually, I haven’t lost steam. That is inaccurate. The steam has just been directed elsewhere. It’s been directed to Exolymph, a cyberpunk newsletter that I launched recently. I am really enjoying this endeavor, and if you’re interested in computers and RAD TECHNO-DYSTOPIAS, you might like it too. Go ahead and sign up here.

Forlorn bunny illustration by Paola Zakimi -- the print is $5.50 on Etsy. — Forlorn bunny illustration by Paola Zakimi — the print is $5.50 on Etsy.

Okay, that’s all! Thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter! I hope you’re enjoying December :)

Best,
Sonya

Bots Should Punch Up

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Sonya Mann

I came across another delightful Creative Commons post! (The last one was “Just Your Typical Startup Acquisition Announcement”.) It’s called “Bots Should Punch Up”, written by Leonard Richardson, and Beau Gunderson is the person who linked me to it. I’m republishing the essay here, unedited except for one set of punctuation marks. My comments are in brackets. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Over the weekend I went up to Boston for Darius Kazemi’s “bot summit”. You can see the four-hour video if you’re inclined. I talked about @RealHumanPraise with Rob, and I also went on a long-winded rant that suggested a model of extreme bot self-reliance. If you take your bots seriously as works of art, you should be prepared to continue or at least preserve them once you’re inevitably shut off from your data sources and your platform.

We spent a fair amount of time discussing the ethical issues surrounding bot construction, but there was quite a bit of conflation of what’s “ethical” with what’s allowed by the Twitter platform in particular, and website Terms of Service in general. I agree you shouldn’t needlessly antagonize your data sources or your platform, but what’s “ethical” and what’s “allowed” can be very different things. However, I do have one big piece of ethical guidance that I had to learn gradually and through osmosis. Since bots are many hackers’ first foray into the creative arts, it might help if I spell it out explicitly. Continue reading “Bots Should Punch Up” →

Design as an Attitude

Posted on December 12, 2015June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

The design process consists of making conscious decisions about how to set up a creation. Design’s defining ethos is thinking deeply about a system before planning to implement it. Even a simple object can be considered a system, or perhaps an interface, because it will be touched and used. Therefore even the most basic product should be designed in the way I’m describing. Something complex like a computer operating system requires extensive mental energy.

Free menu icons by The Open Dept. Pretty generic.

One of my least favorite aspects of the world — of reality — is that you can’t simply intuit things. The human brain is frequently irrational and instincts are often wrong, so we need evidence and research to guide us. Humans were able to invent algebra but we certainly don’t follow the rules of logic in our day-to-day mental processing — hence Wikipedia’s long list of cognitive biases.

Design is how we combat our mental quirks when building a product. Instead of throwing things together willy-nilly, we try different combinations, test the results, and eventually settle on a functional configuration. Hopefully the best option is also beautiful! This method produces better results than following random impulses and calling it good.

Theoretically, anyway — sometimes I’m baffled by the choices of very high-status manufacturers.

Wanna use Apple's Magic Mouse while charging it? TOO DAMN BAD. Photo by Roman Loyola; via Macworld. — Wanna use Apple’s Magic Mouse while charging it? TOO DAMN BAD. Photo by Roman Loyola via Macworld.

It’s Okay to Not Learn How to Code

Posted on December 9, 2015June 19, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Sometimes — actually quite often — I think to myself, “I should learn how to code.” When I’m feeling particularly peppy, I open up a Khan Academy tutorial. Then after a few minutes I get bored and scroll through Twitter instead. Sure, programming languages are cool and useful, but so is geometry, and I don’t spend my free time on that either.

Image created by Octavian Arnaut. Posted with this comment: "EveryMatrix is looking for programmers." — Image created by Octavian Arnaut.

Here’s the thing: if I were the type of person who would be good at coding, I would have already been playing with Python and Ruby for years. I would have been entranced by HTML in fifth grade — instead of learning the rudiments from Neopets and moving on — and I would have branched out from there.

Realistically, I don’t want to learn how to code. I want the social cachet of being able to build stuff using computers, and I want the high salary a programmer can command in today’s labor market. But there are much easier ways to garner social cachet, ways that exploit my comparative advantage. Maybe I won’t make as much money as the wizards who design APIs and put together apps, but that’s just a function of supply and demand. In other words, it’s a reflection of my skills’ economic value, not a reflection of my value as a human being. Besides, I’ll earn enough.

Even if I forced myself to learn to code, I still wouldn’t be competitively good at it, because I’m not interested. There’s nothing in particular that I want to build that I can’t already hack together using basic OSS or otherwise freely available tools. I have found that it’s impossible to teach myself anything that I’m not enthused by, so why bother trying? There are so many subjects that I do find fascinating — better to focus my energy on those areas instead.

I’m giving myself permission to NOT learn how to code. If something changes and I find myself drawn to it, or if I need more technical capabilities to advance a project, I’ll revisit those Khan Academy tutorials. Either way, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Context Is Vital

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Sonya Mann

Different people have different perspectives and their life experiences are not the same as yours. This feels like an obvious statement, more along the lines of “duh” than “revelation”, but every time I’m prompted to think about it, I feel wowed by the diversity of human viewpoints. In a visceral way.

It’s actually kind of unsettling — my intuitive schema for how the world works depends on most people perceiving things similarly to me, and I have to constantly tear down that default model and build a more accurate one. Brains are not good at diverging from their basic assumptions, at least not without significant repetition, so it’s a struggle.

Compassion is difficult to maintain, but it’s useful. I would even say that empathy (or at least a semblance thereof) is one of the more high-impact skills a person can learn. It vastly improves your ability to communicate, which also makes you better at design!

Colorful street art in Lima, Peru. Photo by McKay Savage. Observe the mishmash of styles!

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