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

Tweets

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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      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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    2. 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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    3. 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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    4. 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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    5. 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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    6. 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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    7. 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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    8. 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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    9. 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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    10. 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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      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

      12:08 PM - 25 Aug 2020
      • 11 Likes
      • J. Ryan Stinnett Michael Chapiro James Giammona kardaver Jay-E MilkersAnonymous Empire of Oats Ben Reinhardt
      1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. 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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        3. 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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        4. 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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        5. 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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        6. 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
          Show this thread
        7. End of conversation

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