Tucker Carlson is a conservative/liberterian I’m actually able to listen to and enjoy. He’s got interesting, intelligent guests and manages to focus on conversation without boring the audience. He’s also the rare young man who looks good in a bow tie.
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Running on Empty
Peter G. Peterson was recently on Charlie Rose discussing his new book, Running On Empty : How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (here’s an excerpt). Here’s two paragraphs that sum up his argument:
The theological war between Republicans and Democrats is bankrupting our future. Our two parties have organized themselves around two lopsided and mutually exclusive world views: Democrats believe every American is “entitled” to government largesse, while Republicans see only the ball and chain of punitive taxation. Each of these views has a set of self-justifying “myths.” But their consequences go well beyond making our political process seem foolish. While federal deficit projections soar to dangerous heights, threatening our kids with unconscionable tax hikes, these myths have polarized the two parties and ruled out the sort of bipartisan consensus Americans need to avert fiscal catastrophe.
During the early years of both Social Security and Medicare, Congress kept tax rates unrealistically low and awarded ever-higher benefits to new retirees who had contributed only for a year or two. That meant that the children of the World War II generation (including the boomers) would have to contribute at much higher tax rates over their entire working lives just to keep benefits flowing to their parents. It’s even worse news for today’s young Americans, whose payroll tax rate will have to double to fund the demographic tsunami of retiring boomers unless the system is reformed.
Peterson points out that 1/3 of Americans go into retirement with no savings, relying entirely on social security, meaning it is not only crucial but more susceptible to a crash when the baby boomers retire than many people think.
He also criticizes the Republicans for wanting to extend their tax cuts and make them permanent, despite the goal being short-term economic stimulation.
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The cost of war
From now until November I’ll probably be blogging more on American politics, both to refine my views and because this here is my little soapbox. You’ve been warned.
The Bush campaign’s assertion that “The world is a better place without Saddam” is absolutely true. Saddam is an evil man. But this statement looks only at the benefit of the Iraqi war and not the costs. We started a war to remove Saddam and find his weapons (the latter based on circumstantial evidence). We did remove Saddam and there were collateral benefits like scaring Syria into giving up it’s arms program. Both good things.
What is this worth to us? It’s hard to say, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. When I look at how much the war cost I think we crossed way over any reasonable person’s line.
First we should look at the cost in human life. The coalition fatalities number over 1,000. The estimates of Iraqi civilian fatalities range from 7,000 to between 21,700 and 55,000. Around 5000 Iraqi soldiers died. The “lucrative” contracts resulted in at least 111 contractors missing or dead. And at least 30 journalists are dead.
We might remember how utterly stunned we were at the nearly 3,000 deaths on September 11, 2001. If we multiply that number by four it still isn’t the at least 13,000 people killed in Iraq.
The Cost of War site has a great financial analysis (summary: $122 billion and counting). The figure of $1,700 cost per U.S. household is particulularly interesting when you compare it to the few hundred Bush gave each household in tax savings.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ costs of the war is a more complete list, including indirect costs on the economy, health, and international relations.
Update: Thinking more about this, I have to remember how evil Saddam was, and quantify it likewise. It’s thought that he has killed a million Iraqis, both through war and in terror, in a country of 22 million people. Comparing the numbers — as cold as that is — it seems worth it.
John Z. points out that we spent four times the gross national income of Iraq during the war, raising the idea of how we could’ve given that money to Iraqis to fix the problem instead. Technically it’s against international law to put a price on a national leader (not that international law has stopped the Bush administration), but some economic incentives to the Iraqi army might have done wonders to avoid any war at all. After all, we’re the capitalists, we should know how to spend this money better than anyone.
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Wider is better
Someday in the not-too-distant future I will start pestering you all with urges to start leveraging auditory interfaces. But first I’ll pester you with the potential for horizontal scrolling. It seems quite useful on-screen, and those who are doing it now benefit from the novelty factor. One example is the current version of Ftrain.com, as if Paul’s writing wasn’t compelling enough, and another is Kottke’s portfolio, as if his work samples weren’t compelling enough. Seen others that rock? Lemme know at victor (at) victorlombardi.com.
Update: Owen deflates the novelty element, with good reason, and Nick sends us Shutterbug’s tour of the Sydney International Airport, a wonderful way to tell a story in pictures. As I scroll it feels like turning contiguous pages. If this could snap into detents the way we want the backslider to it could do wonders for children’s “books”.
- Zen Garden
- demian5
- ndroid (web archive)
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Joy Mountford Interview
I’m happy to see a new interview with Joy Mountford, as I entered this whole field after hearing her lecture at New York University (during her tenure at Apple) over 10 years ago. The idea that someone with a psychology background was making computers easier to use was revolutionary for me. This is only a chat, but she includes some good points…
I think that every five years there has been a shift of the interface paradigm that I have worked within, which also paralleled technology industry waves. Defense business interests shifted into the AI knowledge worker space, then from the specialized AI work into personal computing (Apple), and then consumer electronics (Interval). Now my interests are in ubiquitous computing or the advent of “smart everyday objects.” …Businesses ask me to offer insights on the future of “computing”. That’s obviously a gigantic subject, so I usually talk to them about those user interface paradigms transitions…
I invited some film people to come and work in my group (at Apple) and create new uses and directions for it. They helped create Navigable Movies, which was the precursor to QuickTime VR… I think this was a really good illustration of what happens when you put technology in the hands of people who think of doing different things with it. I believe interface people should foster such creativity and experiments by encouraging some different things to happen.
I’m actually obsessed right now about why everything’s so miniature. People are not getting smaller, yet the displays and control surfaces are. I want the biggest buttons. I don’t care what it costs.
There’s a big difference between industrial design and interface design. …experience design takes place over time… A solution may be found quickly but experience occurs over time — belonging to a bigger space.
I miss the purity of products. I like to know that when I buy a phone it just makes phone calls and is optimally designed for that.
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YWCA Identity
The power and effectiveness of the new YWCA logo is worth reading about, in Speak Up, Design Observer, and Landor.
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Amazing Internet Phone Service
I recently signed up for Vonage, an Internet phone service in the US and Canada, and love it. Also known as Voice over IP, it uses your Internet connection rather than a phone line to connect. Here’s some highlights of why I like it:
- Cost: By far the best reason to switch is the savings. My wife and I don’t use the phone much, but we have family in Canada and Germany and these calls were expensive. Our bills averaged US$95, and now they average $25. We have the 500 minute plan for $15 and calls to Germany are only $.03/minute. They also have unlimited US/Canada plans for $30.
- Easy to set up: they mail you a device that gets plugged in between your computer and your Internet connection. Then you plug your normal phone into the device. Done. The computer doesn’t need to be turned on or even plugged in.
- Same phone number: Vonage can transfer your current number to their system, so I kept my precious 212 Manhattan area code.
- Features: Their website records all information in real-time, so I can use it as caller ID, listen to voicemail, manage features, and view current activity as well as all the usual billing info.
- Networked: Just as you might plug into the Internet from anywhere using your laptop, you can do the same with the Vonage device. So if I’m on a business trip I can bring the device to a hotel and use it with their Internet connection.
Their customer website is well designed and their customer service is responsive. I’m so psyched to find a company who is doing things right I’m recommending them here. If you’re considering signing up I can refer you and you’ll get a month free (and I’ll get a credit too), just email me at victor (at) victorlombardi.com.
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IA Education Survey
The AIfIA Education Initiative is surveying IA practitioners to get a better picture of our skills and what skills we think today’s students will need. We will use this information to help form a recommended educational curriculum. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete; help out if you have a chance.
The survey results will be reported in aggregate on the aifia.org website. No personally identifiable information is recorded.
Thanks!
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Everyone’s punk rock band
The nice people at Amazon recently delivered a book on design history along with all-time quarterback from Death Cab for Cutie songwriter/frontman Ben Gibbard, a lo-fi homemade recording. Reading one while listening to the other is oddly complementary. Gibbard, playing simple and melancholy pop songs, self-reflexively sings of his relationship to his punk rock influences…
And if we could break the rules that were already
Broken before we were born,
Then we could hold them to their guns
Cause we’d be a punk rock band tooIn the book, they recount the design trends of the past. Art Nouveau, in UX terms, emphasized esthetics while the Bauhaus emphasized usability. The Modernists did away with all decoration, having the form follow the function, and so on. And of course the effects of all this on people and society was argued through essays as well as artifacts as passionately as we do today.
So now when I see gurus come along with something like expectation design it looks like they’re treading on well-worn ground. Yes, the intracacies of digital design are new and different, but the higher level of how design affects people has been addressed for a hundred years. I start to understand why the traditional design press doesn’t always take UX design seriously. When it comes to design theory we’re green.
I didn’t know about design history because I hadn’t lived through it, and had never read it. I’m now feeling more sympathetic to all those LIS folks who feel like they’ve been doing information architecture for decades. When you look at their artifacts it seems they haven’t, and yet in conceptual ways they sometimes have.
Given the variety of our backgrounds (my education was in the liberal arts, and training was first in IT), a lot of us probably haven’t read the design history. We all want to invent punk rock, and it’s a little humbling when we realize we’re just repeating what Thonet did 140 years ago. As Mr. Gibbard would say,
What could they possibly do next to shock the crowd?
“We’re gonna rock rock rock you, make you scream out loud”
Bad boys whatcha gonna?Learn more:
- A History of Industrial Design has an overview of trends
- A Century of Design is an illustrated book arranged by designer
- Design History Society publishes a journal of academic articles
- designboom has short, fun history essays
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Corporate Blogging and Power
Elizabeth Albrycht on Corporate Blogging and Power: ‘I think blogging is one of those new technologies that makes the negotiations about power visible…. Power needs secrecy. Humanity needs openness. Ergo – blogging actually works on the side of humanity….’
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DIY Home Projector
Though I quickly corrected my broken TV problem by picking up a used model on Craigslist, I’m still fascinated by the projector option. Here’s a guide to a $200 DIY projector using an LCD panel and an overhead projector. Part of the appeal is having a school-like overhead projector in your living room, very retro. During parties you could leave some overheads next to the machine and see how people reacted.
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Razorfish acquired, again
This time for $160 million, by aQuantive, who owns Avenue A. SBI had picked up Razorfish for $8.2 million less than two years ago, but also added MarchFirst, iXL, Scient, Lante, etc. to the mix. Would be interesting to do the math and see how much SBI actually made on the flip (sorry to put it in cold financial terms, but I think that’s all there is to it).
It’s an amazing brand story as well. Consider the strength of the Razorfish name:
- In the early days Razorfish acquired several other companies but always kept the Razorfish name.
- After SBI aquired the companies mentioned above, it only rebranded after acquiring Razorfish.
- And now it lives on as Avenue A/Razorfish.
That name is probably a temporary combination to educate the market, it’ll be interesting to see what the final name becomes. Certainly a lesson in building a brand reputation, even an infamous one.
Contrast with how Semaphore — along with some others — was recently folded into Arc, part of the Publicis group. I’m kinda sad to see the old Semaphore site go away, they had a niche that made sense.
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Dynamic Text Replacement
Once the HTML is finished loading, our script will search it for specified elements (h2, span, etc.) and replace the text inside of them with an img tag. This dynamic img tag has its alt attribute set to the original text, and its src attribute set to the URL of the PHP script that we just installed. The PHP script then sends back a custom PNG image, and voila: custom headings.
That is whacked.
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What do markets buy?
‘Markets don’t buy products, customers do.‘ —Tom Peters
A great argument for complementing marketing with design.