Bosworth on the Tragedy of the Commons

November 21st, 2004

My nomination for Technical Opinion Piece of the Year goes to Adam Bosworth’s recent talk at the ICSOC04. Adam’s speech is enlightening on a great many levels and reminds us that above all else, the success of any technology is directly related to how forgiving it is to the human condition.

The next time you find yourself arguing about something like XHTML vs. HTML, validation, or the semantic web, give this article a read. It really brings the focus back to what matters. It’s not about who can follow what rules. It’s about who can solve what problems.

* Also see Sriram Krishnan’s excellent follow-up post here.

Like this entry? You can follow me on Twitter here, subscribe via email here, or get the RSS feed if that's how you roll.

2 Responses:

Mark Wubben says:
Awesome reads, thanks man!
#1 - November 22nd, 2004 at 6:54 am
Asterisk says:
The Power of Simple
If there is one thing that’s bothered my professionally it’s over-engineering. I’ve worked with too many products, too many processes and to many designs that are simply too damn much. Today Mike pointed out Adam Bosworth’s ISCO…
#2 - November 22nd, 2004 at 9:13 am

Leave a Reply:

Shared

Solitude and Leadership:

Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information…

Takes a little while to get going, but overall a great article about the virtues of seeking solitude from distractions in order to develop your own original thoughts.

“I think you’ve got a pretty good imagination, despicability-wise!”

“Look Around You - Computer Games”

Can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this BBC series before. Brilliant. Make sure to watch them all. (via daringfireball)

10 New Year’s resolutions for designers:

Do you think Chelsea Clinton asks herself if her mom would understand something complex? No. Because her mom is a badass.

How Doctors Die:

If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity.

This is the most concise, easily understood article on the perils of end-of-like care in the United States I’ve ever read. It is a must-read, and frankly, a must-heed, in my opinion. (via kottke)

Lost Type Co-op | Browse Fonts:

A nice collection of pay-what-you-will typefaces from Tyler Galpin and Riley Cran.

How to interview a designer with the perfect design exercise:

These sorts of tests are common for engineering hires, but it’s nice to see an example of a good design-oriented one.

Jessica Hische's Lovely Blog:

Embarrassed I had never seen this until today. Lovely work all around. (via drawar)

This recently unearthed video of Steve Jobs at work during the early days of NeXT is a remarkable look inside how he ran meetings, how he created culture at his startups, and how others — like Joanna Hoffman around the 11 minute mark — called B.S. on his reality distortion field. It’s also remarkable in that it reveals Jobs to be a man who picks carrots in pressed work shirts.

Paper Birds by Diana Beltran Herrera

View.js — A simple, lightweight, jQuery photo viewer for the web

The Republican Clown College by WMxdesign. These are so great. Make sure to check out the whole set.

BuiltWith: Web Technology Usage Statistics:

Sometimes when you are deciding on technologies to use on a new site (e.g. jQuery vs. YUI or MS SQL vs. MySQL) it’s instructive to examine what everyone else is doing. BuiltWith has an incredible amount of trending data to help you out in that regard. Very, very cool.

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design:

Lots of good thinking here. No solutions, but a nice reminder that two-dimensional touch interfaces are transitional, not permanent.