Marbles

# Offline Octopus w Fabien Benetou (https://otter.ai/u/e58DWwz49LC4NXZqzdFBGU-Je9A?tab=summary)

Spatial computing is a new material. Some materials are more responsive to some design patterns than others. It makes no sense to say, "Skyscrapers should be built out of cotton – if only cotton were strong enough." It's a better policy to figure out what design patterns play to the strengths of that material.

I recommend reading 24 hours in an Invisible Epidemic (https://pudding.cool/2023/09/invisible-epidemic/). you should read it because I'm going to talk about the syntax and mechanics, not the content. Go ahead and check it out, I'll wait.

Every so often, I reverse-engineer puzzle games. I start playing them when I'm stressed. I play them like I'm trying to get an answer to a question. That's when I get interested in what's underneath the game. This time, I reverse-engineered Dot The Game (https://apps.apple.com/au/developer/emmanuel-roux/id914649624) by Emmanuel Roux.

Apple recently popularized "spatial computing" to distinguish their product from virtual reality. Both terms are easy to pick apart. Writing is spatial computing, just as TV and social media are virtual realities. Spatial computing implies transformation rather than replication. That is an interesting vector to explore the future of text and, more broadly, the future of cognition.

Imagine Hollywood announces that henceforth all blockbusters will be based on video games. Video games have emerged as a mature art form that can convey depth, nuance, and sincerity. The smash success of the HBO show The Last of Us is proof of what video games can be. There is also a great overlap in the audience.

Exploring scroll tech in an age of AI and VR may seem anachronistic. But there's something uniquely immediate and refreshing about a scroll. It reminds me that pages are a technological innovation distinct from paper.

ML will replace forensic sketch artists. Sadly, Mugshot GPT is an inevitability.

I talked with Adam Wern earlier today, and he told me when he's in VR he will take the flying pretty quickly. Flying is just easier. It makes more sense than walking. He noticed that his kids do the same thing.

I don't know how long this series will be, but here's a list of things I plan to talk about. These all relate to the game. They are in no particular order.

At the end of April, I played a small part in discussing AI and academia. The biggest thrill, as always, was talking with Ted Nelson and Vint Cerf. Here's the talk and snippet of the talk (edited for clarity):

This is a cross-examination of the mobile game Uncrossed (https://www.styrognome.com/uncrossed.html) by Michael Economy.

Future of Text is a group of earnest nerds that meet every Monday (and sometimes Friday) to talk about things only loosely related to text. I sat in for a bit yesterday and said some words.

There is a secret cabal of information designers who have been redesigning the periodic table for the last two hundred years. I just discovered them via Pinterest.

Tasks, or To-Do Lists, are such an established pattern in applications that they've replaced "Hello World" as the defacto boilerplate code for any new framework.

A sonder of sundry & serendipitous articles I surfaced while diving for one totally unrelated article. A braid emerges between the law of large numbers, the tragedy of math, the magic of abstract intuition and the pitfalls of application.

Just a wrapper:

You may have noticed a lot of issues in this simple repo. Why so many issues?

An old coworker recently asked me about resources for a UX designer to learn about AI, specifically how to prevent bias in machine learning.

An alternate theory of design as foundation-building. A few links that revolve around the consequences of order and conquest, colonization, governance, deterioration, and existential threats.

description: A running list of objects I look at from different angles

Each one of these videos is worth discussing at length. Putting them here so I can return to them later. Most of these are just plain fun to watch. The first few are about the discipline of Systems Thinking, but the majority of the videos reflect a style of reasoning I resonate with. In other words, systems thinking in action.

Programming is hard. But it's the tedium that comes from an impoverished medium.

Some harmless wordplay on the words 'Resolution,' and 'Vision.'

## Currently

But I can't use exclamation points in body??!

Could be a really powerful pipeline.