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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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      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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    2. 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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    3. 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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    4. 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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    5. 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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    6. 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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    7. 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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    8. 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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    9. 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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    10. 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.
      Show this thread
      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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      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.

      11:20 AM - 25 Aug 2020
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        2. 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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        3. 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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        4. 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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        5. 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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        6. 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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        7. 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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        8. 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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        9. 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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        10. 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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        11. 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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        12. 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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        13. 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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        14. 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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        15. 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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        16. 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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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Kevin McGillivray

          Some of this thread assumes a false digital dualist paradigm of a space of digital workflows and a space of physical workflows. Obviously, this can be broken/pushed. I do like some aspects of Bret Victor's thinking here (the dynamicland stuff)https://twitter.com/kev_mcg/status/1298326093682946048 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Kevin McGillivray @kev_mcg
          Replying to @vgr
          Maybe the best computer "workshop" is the place where your home workshop itself is a computer—the pattern encompasses both the software-as-place metaphor and the space itself where the software is used. Screens are the constraint. https://twitter.com/kev_mcg/status/1298324200902610944?s=20 …
          2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          This is a paradigm of the workspace as a single entity, with both physical and virtual elements embodied by a single space, like a room. This in my account would be like Jarvis getting overloaded into a non-dualist assistant computer who doesn't hide the digital world.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Something about this direction feels a bit wrong to me though. The problem I describe would exist even if everything you did was information based, and you didn't need any physical stuff at all.

          2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          While a work-UX that encompasses say physical whiteboards, tabletops, lab equipment, soldering stations etc. all as part of the (notional or real) "computer" is an interesting direction, but a bit totalizing for me. But there's something there for sure.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted

          Hmm. Interesting looking ref: https://twitter.com/JaycelAdkins/status/1298333693933740033 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          This Tweet is unavailable.
          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Alec Resnick

          I was not familiar with this body of literature, nice... I only read random historical/biographical snippets.https://twitter.com/aresnick/status/1298328932316598279 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Alec Resnick @aresnick
          Replying to @vgr
          On the off-chance you aren't familiar, there's a lovely corner of STS/ethnography about tool-building culture of science and its role epistemologically and otherwise (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226279170 …, https://amazon.com/dp/0804727864 , https://amazon.com/dp/0226136787 , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327809jls0901_3 …).
          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          BTW, though I've framed this as a UX type problem, it isn't really. It's basically a macroeconomic problem. Consumerization as a 130 year old historical trend (I date it to 1890 when the home stopped also being a workshop) needs to gives way to high-tech neo-producerism

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          I'm very wary of what someone aptly dubbed techwashed pastoralism, so I don't producerism in the older Thomas Jefferson sense or the wood-working-with-hand-tools sense. I'm talking replacing consumer culture with last-mile circular economies, 100% full-lifecycle ownership etc.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          In this context, the home/life as a producer space isn't a sort of waldenponding for NPC maker-doers. It's sort of a thick-client for the cloudy infrastructure world that is a big part of creating a more sustainable material economy.

          1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Like, one reason I'm experimenting with all this stuff is what I think of as "stack research." Just how much more sustainable/low-carbon could the world get if the home were a locus of repair, making, circular-local trading etc. Not just consumption?

          3 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          I’ll close with a picture of these calipers that just arrived from amazon. I find myself asking 2 questions: 1. Where will it live physically? 2. It’s already digital unlike calipers I used in high school in 1989. Why can’t I NFC measurements directly into a spreadsheet? 😡pic.twitter.com/y3d6mK23S9

          6 replies 0 retweets 21 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 25
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Nick Pinkston  🌐

          Ooh! Beyond my budget, but will put on my lab wishlist for future...https://twitter.com/NickPinkston/status/1298339458895421440 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Nick Pinkston  🌐 @NickPinkston
          Replying to @vgr
          They make those: https://www.amazon.com/Fowler-54-100-167-0-Electronic-Measurement-Resolution/dp/B013HKW12E …
          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        29. End of conversation

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