I like how Luke is using a large language model to make a chat interface for his own content.
This is the exact opposite of how grifters are selling the benefits of machine learning (“Generate copious amounts of new content instantly!”) and instead builds on over twenty years of thoughtful human-made writing.
Adversarial chatbots engaged in an endless back-and-forth:
This piece simulates scheduling hell by generating infinite & unique combinations of meeting conflicts between two friends.
The upside to being a terrible procrastinator is that certain items on my to-do list, like, say, “build a chatbot”, will—given enough time—literally take care of themselves.
I ultimately feel like it has slowly turned into a fad. I got fooled by the trend, and as a by-product became part of the trend itself.
You see, diversity of rendering engines isn’t actually in itself the point. What’s really important is diversity of influence: who has the ability to make decisions which shape the web in particular ways, and do they make those decisions for good reasons or not so good?
Stuart responds to a post from Brian that was riffing off a post of mine from a while back. I like this kind of social network.
I love, love, love all the little details of HTML that Aaron offers up here. And I really like how he positions non-visual user-agents like searchbots, screen readers, and voice assisants as headless UIs.
HTML is a truly robust and expressive language that is often overlooked and undervalued, but it has the incredible potential to nurture conversations with our users without requiring a lot of effort on our part. Simply taking the time to code web pages well will enable our sites to speak to our customers like they speak to each other. Thinking about how our sites are experienced as headless interfaces now will set the stage for more natural interactions between the real world and the digital one.
This is a great description by Chris of the problems that webmentions aim to solve.
If you use Twitter, your friend Alice only uses Facebook, your friend Bob only uses his blog on WordPress, and your pal Chuck is over on Medium, it’s impossible for any one of you to @mention another. You’re all on different and competing platforms, none of which interoperate to send these mentions or notifications of them. The only way to communicate in this way is if you all join the same social media platforms, resulting in the average person being signed up to multiple services just to stay in touch with all their friends and acquaintances.
Given the issues of privacy and identity protection, different use cases, the burden of additional usernames and passwords, and the time involved, many people don’t want to do this. Possibly worst of all, your personal identity on the internet can end up fragmented like a Horcrux across multiple websites over which you have little, if any, control.
Chris weighs up the ethical implications of Google Duplex:
The social hacking that could be accomplished is mind-boggling. For this reason, I expect that having human-sounding narrow AI will be illegal someday. The Duplex demo is a moment of cultural clarity, where it first dawned on us that we can do it, but with only a few exceptions, we shouldn’t.
But he also offers alternatives for designing systems like this:
…design the interface so that it is unmistakeable that it is synthetic. This way, even if the listener missed or misunderstood the disclosure, there is an ongoing signal that reinforces the idea. As designer Ben Sauer puts it, make it “Humane, not human.”
JP Rangaswami also examines the rise of the platforms but he’s got some ideas for a more sustainable future:
A part of me wants to evoke Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander when it comes to building sustainable platforms. The platform “community” needs to be cared for and looked after, the living spaces they inhabit need to be designed to last. Multipurpose rather than monoculture, diverse rather than homogeneous . Prior industrial models where entire communities would rely on a single industry need to be learnt from and avoided. We shouldn’t be building the rust belts of the future. We should be looking for the death and life of great platforms, for a pattern language for sustainable platforms.
I love what Ben is doing with this single-serving site (similar to my design principles collection)—it’s a collection of handy links and resources around voice UI:
Designing a voice interface? Here’s a useful list of lists: as many guiding principles as we could find, all in one place. List compiled and edited by Ben Sauer @bensauer.
BONUS ITEM: Have him run a voice workshop for you!
In which I have a conversation with a polar bear.
Very well-mannered species …I’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Online discourse:
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an x-ray that could peer into the true intention behind words on a screen? Sadly we don’t have that x-ray yet (for most of humanity’s existence, we had body language to enrich our words and enhance understanding, but we live in interesting times where so much, perhaps even the majority, of our communication lacks body language) and so we have to be mindful of how our words might be perceived, and what the ramifications of publishing them might be. That’s not to say we should hold off completely, but it does mean we should be mindful if we’re to be most effective.
Cennydd speaks his brains on conversational interfaces—a refreshing counterpoint to Chris’s cheerleading.
An examination of websites behaving conversationally, including Huffduffer.
Weighing up the pros and cons of allowing comments on blog posts.
Quotably offers a nice well-ordered interface onto Twitter conversations.
Stephanie Sullivan has redesigned. Her site is now almost as smart and sassy as she is. Very nice work, Steph.
This is a great way to deal with telemarketers.
This is an astoundingly brilliant mashup: Overheard in New York meets Google Maps. It's fan-bloody-tastic and remarkably fast for all the data it contains.
Talking with the youth of today about how they spend their time online.