We’re designing a web-based API this week, and it’s reminded me that all design is inherently political. Specifically, we’re thinking about what data we expose. We can expose all of it, and let the people receiving it decide what to do with it. Or we can curate it, with the hope that the people receiving it have a better experience.
Which is better? Which is right?
A firehose of information is not a happy place to find yourself. But a feed that’s curated by other people…
Ask people on Xitter, who are subjected more and more to an information feed that’s curated by a guy with Opinions. Or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or any of the other places where your experience as a user is designed to capture your attention. Ask anyone who’s ever worked in a corporate setting where your access to information is ‘curated’ by people who gain from information not being free-flowing; who benefit from the flow of information to others being something that they can steer.
Ask left-leaning people about the right-leaning press. Ask right-leaning people about the left-leaning press. Ask people who think you can only get your information from a feed you curate yourself, which always features the same three people who all recommend each other.
On the other hand…I’m over on mastodon.social, where the people are anarchic and you have to curate your feed. There is no algorithm to recommend you things. You have turned up at a party and everyone is talking animatedly and you do not know anyone, you did not come with anyone, why did you come here at all, isn’t it better at the other place where someone firmly grips your elbow and steers you towards the pictures of dead babies because at least then you don’t have to think too hard…
When it happens, I have a eulogy half-written for the artist formerly known as Twitter.
Over here, you have to write your own filters. And everyone has to write their own filters. Except, even then, the admins make decisions about what’s unacceptable and boot people off who breach those rules. Some of those rules are made by governments. I’m trying to say that there’s no actual firehose, and it’s all design, all the way down.
I don’t know where I’m going with this yet. Sometimes I pull a thread and there’s nothing on the end of it. Sometimes I pull a thread and there’s something on the end of it but it’s a long way away, so I don’t realise what I’ve done until a thought hits me in the night like an anvil.
Much to consider.
The writer I’m working with has taken a few of my suggestions and absolutely flown with them. It reminds me a little of an interview I once read about Mads Mikkelsen cracking an egg:
We are more than a bit concerned with the Benihana egg trick called for in the script. I’ve tried it and can only get it 1 out of 4 tries, and I’ve seen Benihana chefs flub the manoeuver when they have an entire grill as target. Mads has to crack his eggs into a 8-inch diameter skillet. The props Master calls his guy. The Production Manager calls in his guy. I call my guy. On the morning of the shoot we have 8 dozen eggs and 3 Japanese chefs with their hands made up to be hand doubles. I guess I don’t have to tell you that when Mads arrives on set, I briefly describe the egg trick to him whereupon he just tosses an egg up in the air and breaks it perfectly on the spatula. Did it. Unbelievable. I insist it was a lucky fluke but he does it again. I accuse him of practicing when I wasn’t looking but he laughs (as if he has time to practise egg-cracking between scenes) and confesses he was a juggler in his youth.
Janice Poon, food artist for Hannibal: https://janicepoonart.blogspot.com/2014/03/
It’s this. It’s me going “Hey, I think we could stress this plot point a bit more” and her coming back with an entire freaking song. A song that absolutely nails that plot point. She’s so cool.
But that’s actually a segue. I’m thinking again about design and about writing and about the audience. Because we’re (I’m using ‘we’ very generously here) taking real life characters and telling their stories in a 2-hour production, we have to cut things. Real things, and really dramatic things. Really sad things and really joyous things. Some of them don’t suit the narrative that we’re telling. They don’t match the experience we’re trying to cultivate.
It’s not just a biography – it’s a story. We can expose all of it, and let the people receiving it decide what to do with it. Or we can curate it, with the hope that the people receiving it have a better experience.
What’s better? What’s right?
Meta
- bookending the piece gives the reader the experience of having learned something, or at least having been taken on a pleasant journey
- picking two parts of my life and finding a common thread emphasis the narrative that I’m building, even though my life is more complicated than this by some distance
- I deleted a couple of lines that explicitly drew this out, to improve the reader’s experience of figuring out the connection by themselves
- and so even this is a designed, curated narrative
- so is this meta section
- you get an insight into what I want you to think about my writing process, but not everything about it
- I guess you know what I’m going to ask here, so I won’t even bother writing it
- (we both know what it is though, don’t we)
Caffeinated Punctuation 