As regular readers are aware, I also blog occasionally for DMLcentral. I’ve just had a post published there entitled On the Importance of Webmaking, which builds upon that quotation I posted recently.
You should go and read it – I’d be interested in your comments. 🙂
Kyle Wiens from Wired magazine on The New MacBook Pro: Unfixable, Unhackable, Untenable:
We have consistently voted for hardware that’s thinner rather than upgradeable. But we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Our purchasing decisions are telling Apple that we’re happy to buy computers and watch them die on schedule. When we choose a short-lived laptop over a more robust model that’s a quarter of an inch thicker, what does that say about our values?
Every time we buy a locked down product containing a non-replaceable battery with a finite cycle count, we’re voicing our opinion on how long our things should last. But is it an informed decision? When you buy something, how often do you really step back and ask how long it should last? If we want long-lasting products that retain their value, we have to support products that do so.
Today, we choose. If we choose the Retina display over the existing MacBook Pro, the next generation of Mac laptops will likely be less repairable still. When that happens, we won’t be able to blame Apple. We’ll have to blame ourselves.
This is less about Apple and hardware and more about a consumerist, short-term attitude that over-privileges form over function. And, of course, this applies to the Open Web too.
We need less commodification, not more.
In the run-up to me starting full time with the Mozilla Foundation I’ve been continuing my thinking on web literacies.
The above diagram is based upon the excellent work of Michelle Levesque, my diagramming of her work, and some subsequent post-it notes.
I’m thinking out loud here.
Things that have changed since the last version:
I realise that the last of these could be contentious. The reason I’ve removed these more technical aspects has nothing to do with whether I think they’re important. Of course they are.
It’s just that if you start from the endpoint of describing someone who’s ‘web literate’ I think it’s entirely possible not to be able to ‘call an API’ yet still be web literate.
What do you think?
I’d really appreciate some feedback – this is still very early work! 🙂
