Before I transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, I was pursuing a minor in graphic design. I could have taken one of the last darkroom photography courses offered at La Roche College, but chose to take a digital course since I had extensive experience in that area dating back to saving snaps on floppies at the Duquesne Multicultural Computer Academy in the City of Pittsburgh.

I agree with you WRT tactile interfaces, the only reason things like the iPhone work are a combination of text prediction and over-reliance on rare ingredients like rare earth minerals to make that super strong glass and super thin, long lasting batteries.

(China controls a lot of those mines now, because Obama was a weak leader who handed Africqa and SE Asia over to totalitatians.)

I hate how many things were taken digital rapidly, classic example being I read about Nordic countries ditching AM/FM radio.

It is cool and good to be able to buy a twenty dollar radio and set of rechargable double AAs, and then have access to news via folks like NPR + some classical or whatever to flood a room with noise when you need to go full cyberpunk at the library, but the library was closed due to COVID.

I can't tell if the generation after millenials are all what that hentai loving sci fi guy from boing boing warned us about: unable to use the command line or understand the value of general purpose computing, but on my end I'm about to go stand outside with a sign and a cup rather than waste energy and resources standing up a website, writing out a bunch of "creative nonfiction", and then having folks pretend that if they send me something like "Monero" (that might be secure in a technial sense, but is literally sold only in one physical location in my city.)

(A long time ago, I considered being a designer, but that's subjective, and it seems like the field is structured so they mostly invent ways to steal ideas from the technical folks who make it possible for them to have the serenity first to think up cute designs.)

So many designers forget that "low tech" designs were planned after years or generations of iteration and shouldn't be changed lightly -- that might be a load bearing lorus ipsum ;)

(For context, the reason you're getting this type of reply is that around 2010 I offered to work for a major FFRDC codeing up custom forensics tools that would be more usable so they wouldn't need to pay millions for training and licenses, but I never even got a reply to my email despite being referred to that person by someone who founded an entire conference on my area of research.

Then again, we were also discussing whether I should join the FBI at the time.

(My take was they hadn't figured out how to navigate the conflict of interest between the counter intelligence mission and the criminal division, just like the NSA hadn't figured out how to navigate offense and defense or the secret service never learned to navigate the dual mission of offense and defense)

Later on, at Defcon an SS agent (using THAT acronym on purpose) told me if you want to know what it's like to be in the secret service, go stand in a suit on your front lawn in 80% humiudity for twelve hours, but to be fair I didn't check if I could apply and ONLY focus on things like counterfeiting, since I've made it clear for over a decade I won't kill the president, but I'll absolutely pull out my phone and arch my eyebrows at the corpse as I take a photo if someone else does.

This poster paid 150 dollars on a nonprofit salary to go see Obama gaslight him on encryption after.

This is like the fall of the USSR.

Post better.

Be Better.

TL;DR: Great article, thanks for sharing Marban. I agree that low tech interfaces are cool and good.