“That’s the whole secret, is if you hire great people and you don’t mess them up with a lot of analysis and conversation and speculation and nonsense—if you just get out of their way and shut up, they give you the performance that has made them the great performer that they are.” — Woody Allen on directing actors, from Woody Allen: A Documentary, which yes, of course you should watch
There’s an unformed thought I’ve had bouncing around in my head since I first tried out Siri on my 4S. I’d have liked to develop it into something more robust, but it’s a pretty simple idea so I’ll just leave it here.
You can’t say to Siri, “I guess I’d like to do something later like maybe a movie or just something laid back like coffee in the area or probably not a bar because they’re so noisy—maybe one of those coffee places with lots of books and definitely not Jitters because that place smells like underarm” and expect Siri to help you in any way.
You learn quickly that Siri has certain expectations, certain limitations, and must be spoken to with a certain cadence reflecting a certain pattern of thought. Speaking to Siri is a lot like speaking to someone whose English isn’t so strong. It works better if you naturally pre-diagram your sentences and order them rudimentarily.
From Siri’s acceptance or rejection of our commands or requests, comes a feedback loop that trains us to constrain our thoughts to the crucial data.
As we learn to speak to Siri, we’ll learn more about how we formulate ideas into words, how to express those so that they may be understood with less margin of error, ultimately shortening the gap between intention and comprehension.
It’s safe to assume that as we learn to talk to Siri, Siri learns to listen to us. So we’re not simply assimilating with the robot culture, we’re fostering a new understanding between our vastly different types of intelligence.
Which is to say, Siri will teach us how to talk to Siri but maybe more importantly, how to talk to each other.
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Oh god she’s about to eat his whole face and head.
Nash Metropolitan
Jobs was able to get his first car, with his father’s help, when he was fifteen. It was a two-tone Nash Metropolitan that his father had fitted out with an MG engine. Jobs didn’t really like it, but he did not want to tell his father that, or miss out on the chance to have his own car. “In retrospect, a Nash Metropolitan might seem like the most wickedly cool car,” he later said. “But at the time it was the most uncool car in the world.”
I Forgot My Mantra: My Research Project: Why We Like -
Scott Jackson is a really smart young man working on a project to figure out why you Like what you Like on Tumblr. Can you tell him? Sure you can. You’re a smart person who likes to use Tumblr and Likes to use Tumblr and Likes pictures of girls in cute outfits.
So install his extension and help him figure out what makes you tick, pervert.
Hey, Tumblr.
I’m really interested in Like buttons. I think they’re a fascinating phenomenon. It’s something that’s not even five years old and yet it’s already become something that millions of people do every day. It’s something that we do without thinking, but can’t always explain. Long story short, I’m interested. So interested, in fact, that I decided that my undergrad research project at UQ should be about why we click Like buttons and how knowing that might be able to improve social recommendation systems. I need to gather some information from real live people, and I could really use your help — all you’d have to do is keep using Tumblr. Interested? Read on.
As part of my research, I’m investigating why people are Liking things online. To keep things simple, I’m focusing on users of one particular social network — in this case, Tumblr. I’m running a kind of diary study over the course of a week to find out why people are Liking things on Tumblr.
Here’s how it works. You download and install a browser extension (for Safari or Chrome). Then, for the next week, every time you Like a Tumblr post, a form pops up and asks you why you just Liked that post. You answer the question and submit the form, and then the form goes away. Too easy, right? Everything’s kept anonymous, and you can opt out at any time by just uninstalling the browser extension.
If you’d like to participate in the diary study (and boy would it be swell if you would), head over here, download the browser extension and get Liking!
Thanks for your time.
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I love Steve’s stinky cheese face more than most things.
From his Q&A at the 1997 WWDC, at about 41:20 as an audience member asks him about some engineery thing that Steve clearly thinks stinks like stinky cheese.
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