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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      This can be reasonably justified as a good tradeoff between reliability, cost, form factor and reliability. Just like cars. The hardware is getting higher-tech, less actually repairable by average people, and less in need of repair. But the same cannot be said of software.

      1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      With software, things have gotten MORE awkward, messy, in need of maintenance/repair etc etc. In the 80s, when the command line was still the UX for everybody not just for unix geeks, there was a match between capability and what I'll call "workability"...

      1 reply 2 retweets 21 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      The command line is like a primitive work interface as opposed to consumption. It's like a campfire in relation to a modern kitchen, or a basic household toolbox (screwdrivers, wrenches, hammer...) in relation to a full-scale lab. If it had evolved as a *work* interface...

      2 replies 2 retweets 14 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      ... it would look very different. So there has been highly asymmetric evolution. the computer as a consumption device has evolved 3-4 generations towards increasingly frictionless digital shopping basically. But as a production device, it is basically stuck in 1988.

      2 replies 5 retweets 31 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      This is why, over the years, even as my methods for managing physical workspaces (GTD, setting up offices/desks/kitchens, and now a home lab/workshop) have gotten more mature and sophisticated with the evolution of my own thinking, my digital methods have not.

      1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      I'm still struggling with janky link management... most people now seem to solve that via tab proliferation in the browser. (This is one reason Roam was so impressive for me... it improved my link management)

      2 replies 3 retweets 17 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      I still can't easily organize my "tools" into say "work areas" for "image processing" vs. "spreadsheet work" the way I can separate an electronics workbench from a kitchen. Automation is still at "keyboard shortcuts" level. There is no intuitive way to group tools/processes.

      4 replies 4 retweets 21 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      The browser is a whole other level of interface, but the limitations there are more forgivable, and there has been more of an effort by at least some services to use the browser well as a workspace rather than a consumption space.

      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      I recently tried OnShape (browser-based full-featured CAD), the first time I've played around with CAD in 30 years. Quite impressive, though the interaction paradigms haven't evolved that much, the fact that it's now all in the browser with good version control etc. is neat.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted

      I never got very good at shell scripts, but note that they're also an 80s era technology. I'd like something better and easier tbf. I don't *want* to drive everything from the shell or emacs. *Especially* not given the vast increase in capabilities. https://twitter.com/macodiseas/status/1298317843901997058 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

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      3 replies 1 retweet 10 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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      This feels like say, if the kitchen evolved in capability from a camp fire to a modern kitchen, but we still tried to do everything with a poky stick and huffing/puffing/fanning. Shell scripts, keyboard shortcuts, and emacs are not the answer even for geeks, let alone home cooks.

      11:00 AM - 25 Aug 2020
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      • Emily Andric nicolas decoster Eiso Kant Boleslastislav Feifan Zhou MilkersAnonymous James Giammona John Terracina
      1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          One of the problems is that unlike consumer interfaces, which have given rise to the whole specialized profession of UI/UX designer, producer interfaces in the early, fast-evolving stages of a technology are built by the producers themselves, not a specialized separate profession

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          I'm reading a lot about 17th century science now, and it's amazing the degree which early scientists were also the early instrument makers (Galileo, Huygens). The separation into tool designers vs. producer-users didn't happen till the 1670s or so.

          4 replies 5 retweets 30 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Now the thing about the computer as a producer's tool is that it is so powerful and capable, it hasn't stopped evolving rapidly since Day 1, which means it's never plateaued into a zone where a tool-maker class (a producer-side UI/UX class) can take over fully.

          1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Ie, the only people who can move this forward are people who use computers for production at the edge of its evolving capabilities. One subset (the command-line purists) has decided not to try. Instead, command line prowess becomes the status thing. Is there a subset trying?

          4 replies 2 retweets 11 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          It's not been entirely static. I think version control and package management have been huge conceptual and implemented leaps in production UI/UX thinking. But it's so limited...

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          And unfortunately it's almost all limited to actual programmers. People who use the computer as a tool for other purposes, like say image manipulation or data analysis without coding... they haven't been able to design/customize/evolve/innovate their own tool environments much

          1 reply 5 retweets 21 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Actually it's worse: it's not even just programmers. Even most experienced programmers aren't deep in enough to do more than say customize emacs or their IDE. The actual evolution is driven by programmers' programmers -- systems programmers.

          1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Like Git, arguably the biggest innovation in producer-side UI/UX, is a programmer's shop tool built by the ultimate programmers' programmer, Linus Torvalds. These people use computers for one very narrow kind of production work: making better computers.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          We need Linus Torvalds level people trying to think up better, broader producer-side systemic UX metaphors. Like a "workshop" or "kitchen" or "lab" metaphor for the computer.

          6 replies 3 retweets 29 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          And I'm thinking here mainly of full-fledged ones, like a laptop or desktop, but also for phones and tablets and voice-control devices.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          There is some decent sci-fi inspiration for this. Iron Man's Jarvis is probably my favorite.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Jarvis is a voice assistant metaphor, but has the skills of an extremely capable lab assistant/tech or shop machinist (gender aside: he's a male voice, unlike most voice assistants, who are descended from office secretaries and have female voices)

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          But Jarvis is not quite right, since he's a digital assistant for a primarily *physical* space, and controls robot arms and prototyping areas and stuff. We need Jarvis-grade expressivity for *digital* environments. Like think a massively more powerful Clippy that actually works

          2 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          This train of thought started with me organizing my home office into a sort of lab-maker space. The project crept up on me, but once I realized I was doing it, it was easy.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1295812796664356864 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Thinking about desks I've had over the years. I had an actual L-shaped desk for home office for several years (I think 2004-09) and 2 cheap desks in L-config for several more years. Single desk for the last year. Now going back to L with a twist: second leg will be a workbench.
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          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          A workspace designed for writing and consulting is very simple. Just a desk, a laptop, room for some papers, maybe a whiteboard, a bookshelf with commonly referred to books within reach. Maybe a mic/video rig if you do podcasting and stuff.

          1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          It's also very different in very obvious ways from a space where you can do simple repairs, mechanical/electronics projects/soldering etc. Once I realized I was headed in this direction, the decisions were obvious:

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          1. What kind of workbench to get, 2. Where to put a 3d printer 3. How to hold work (small desk vise?) 4. How to store small parts 5. How to ventilate work area 6. Creating enough length for an optics project Then I thought... hmm what would a lab *computer* look like?

          2 replies 0 retweets 5 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          And here I realized I had *no idea* ... my first thought was "maybe I should build my own computer" but though that might be a fun project, it's not actually salient to what it means to have a "lab computer."

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Back when I was teaching an undergrad lab course as a grad student, a "lab computer" meant a regular PC with a data acquisition/control board attached and some instrumentation software for the students to do their experiments. There were programs like LabView, LabTech etc.

          1 reply 1 retweet 1 like
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          The "lab" part of the computer was basically some applications that talked to some extra hardware. In some cases, integrating with more ordinary software. Like dSpace boards integrated with Matlab. But this is not a "lab computer" really in the sense I mean it.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          I'm talking about a computer organized well for all the soft workflows made necessary by the work. For example. Astrophotography demands an image processing stack. 3d printing demands a CAD stack. What's a computer properly organized around these things like?

          3 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          They used to call these "engineering workstations" but that basically meant "lots of power" not a different UX paradigm. One of the first computers I got to play with was an early Silicon Graphics workstation at my dad's office in like 1990.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          It was *way* more powerful than the 386 PCs at my school. But the only thing I could *do* with it was admire some pretty 3d models with rendered reflective surfaces etc. It didn't have a significantly different UX paradigm to encourage immediate tinkering like a physical lab does

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          These things evolved in Sun and DEC Alpha workstations and later model SG machines through the 90s until they kinda died out in the early 2000s. They were replaced by basic PCs with commodity hardware and OSes. They simply didn't add enough differentiated "producer UX" value.

          2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          When I got my first laptop in 2000 (a Dell Inspiron) I switched from Unix to Windows for all my research work and never looked back. Unlike programmers, I only really needed Matlab and LaTeX, both of which ran fine on Windows, and the processing power was more than enough for me

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          It's a sad story... that the computer as a producer device basically died with the Sun workstation, but it kinda deserved to, since it didn't evolve at all, except for computer scientists themselves. If you were any other kind of scientist or engineer, you were a consumer

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Back to today. The only people I know of who do the kind of things I think should be done are the extreme hackers building their own from-scratch home-automation hardware to Jarvis-up their workspaces. @theartlav has one... but note he's a CS PhD :D

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          If you're say, an astronomer or a biologist, or a virologist researching Covid19 vaccines, you're out of luck. Your computer is basically a consumption tool designed for binge-watching videos and playing games. Just with some of your software loaded on.

          3 replies 2 retweets 10 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Imagine if say automobiles evolved that. ONLY automotive engineers would have anything other than a basic family sedan. If you were a construction worker or farmer, you couldn't get a pickup truck designed with your needs in mind.

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          You'd have to either learn as much about cars as a Ford engineer, and then you could only get a forklift truck designed for working within automobile factories. Farmers having to choose between a Toyota Prius or a forklift truck. No F150s or cybertrucks around.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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