Silicon Valley in the Bay Area. Silicon Beach in Los Angeles. Silicon Alley in Manhattan.
Those tech hubs grab headlines up and down the news. Venture capitalists live for those places, and some of the greatest emerging talent flock to those locations specifically to stand shoulder to shoulder with other great minds.
I wasn’t going to let anybody in the world—not the media, not my friends, not my detractors, nobody—define who I was.
When people express concern about how smartphones are damaging our young people, I laugh. This anxiety that the internet is going to ruin real human interactions is reminiscent of parents in the 50s who were worried that Elvis shaking his hips was the devil. Let’s be very clear here.
The recent uprising and subsequent meltdown of Reddit can be attributed to the age-old problem of letting customers run your business for you. The dream of Reddit is that each individual reader will respond to every story and comment by voting for it to be promoted or demoted, resulting in the best possible content for the largest collection of readers being at the top of page.
Since the dawn of Sci-Fi, humanity has been concerned about AI and whether it will eventually lead to our demise. This a mindset held by great thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates. This fear has often overshadowed the many benefits AI offers and the advantages to our world they can provide. With only speculation to reinforce this worry about our future, we have held ourselves back from the wonders advanced AI can and is already giving us. Only by shaking off these fears can we reap the benefits.
The promise of the Internet is of a world that is freely connected. The reality is that the Internet must do business with the physical world, and in that world the hardware that runs the Internet can find itself within any number of legal boundaries. The United States, in addition to being the headquarters of some of the world’s largest telecoms, also plays host to a significant portion of the Internet’s backbone. This means that legal decisions covering Internet usage in the US have the potential for world reaching consequences.
User Experience is one of, if not the most important thing you need to focus on when building your product, app or website. But in my opinion, the UX consultant or UX team may not always have your best interest at heart.
Regardless which side of the isle you stand politically, you can be rest assured that the passage of net neutrality is a positive for you, and your ability to access the Internet like you have since the 1990’s. The Internet is turning into a business tool with everything from cloud computing to premium Internet providers. When you break this entire issue down to its bare bones, the only businesses that are going to be hurt by this ruling are the major Internet service providers such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. If you’re not one of them, then consider the passage of this new FCC regulatory law a major victory.
Most designers, at least the ones I know, hate to network and rarely do it. The key to networking in the tech world is you do not need to be the best in the world, you just need to be passionate, willing to learn and in a lot of cases be the best designer or developer that people know.
If you haven’t noticed yet, Apple decided to shove U2’s album down your throat. And I’m not exaggerating! Ok..maybe a little. But seriously, go check. Depending on how your iCloud is setup, their latest album will most likely be in your Music app, ready to play or in the ether of your iCloud, available to download.
