Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Its great to have Lindsey Swift on the cover of Women’s Running. If she and others can influence others to feel more comfortable about their bodies image, then even more power to her.
Reminded me of a great TedxTalk I was watching the other day too.
So remember when I said I loved the idea of the BBC listening room?
Well after a little tweeting and a couple of emails, myself and good friend Kate have secured a spot on the listening project site and in history. Yes at some point in the near future you can listen to the discussion of us two as we talk about something (undefined as of yet) for a short while. Goodness knows what people will make of it in decades to come.
Some of you might wonder how did this happen? Heck if you read the blog before, you may say why Ian oh why?
I would direct you to the secret of luck or the richness of life.
Diversity in the digital sector, its the thing which I and many many others are banging about. In recent times, I have been thinking about this a lot and even more in regards to the Mozilla Festival.
This year one of the ambitions in Mozfest is…
How can we leverage the web to include more people, across gender, class, race and age? How can we be humble yet proactive in overcoming real discrimination and exclusion?
On a related note… Toby Mildon, sent me a tweet to his idea to put together a digital diversity alliance.
https://twitter.com/tobymildon/status/639882916730961920
I do want to make the digital world diverse, I am seriously worried about where we are going. There are signs that things will get better for some but its clear we need to look diversity not just one segment of the whole pie. I understand this is incredibly hard but its so important that the aim is the moon not just the upper atmosphere.
Recently I watched Mr Robot and a few other films (I promise no spoilers) but it emphasize the problem with a mono culture for me.
A young computer programmer (Malek) who suffers from social anxiety disorder and forms connections through hacking. He’s recruited by a mysterious anarchist, who calls himself Mr. Robot.
The problem with the mono culture around the digital industry is in my mind self evident. This is bad but its going to get way worst…
As software makes its way into more services and those services in turn become a larger part of our lives through law, economics, social norms plus practically through the internet of things, synthetic biology, etc. It’s important to think about software as having an opinion of some kind.
Lawrence Lessig wrote a fantastic book called code: and other laws of cyberspace. Where be talked about code as law because the law is always playing catch up to the code, algorithms, systems and ultimately opinions baked into the code. Imagine trying to reason with a drone carrying guns, when you naturally act outside of the parameters set by somebodies idea of how people should act (or is that the American police force now?). Reminds me of a colleague at work who during BarCampMediaCity somebody thought was drunk and should be told to leave. But anybody who knows him, knows thats his natural state.
Sounds extreme but the example is pointing at the same thing. Its unconscious bias and unfortunately its being baked into software, hardware and the services we use. But unlike us its not got the chance to recognise the bias and correct its self (as such).
THIS IS BAD!
Why am I not taking Toby up on his ask?
Simple…
You have time to help create the best Digital Diversity Alliance in the whole wide world. It’s not a full-time job but we need committed individuals brimming with passion and drive.
I am time poor, I have a lot of things happening including helping out at a dyslexia group in Manchester and I’m trying to commit to less stuff till I get things in a reasonable state. Its a shame but I need to be honest with myself and its not fair on those who can do a equal or a better job but can also dedicate more attention than myself. Hate to be the one hold back such a great alliance.Take good fortune Toby and if I can help in future, I certainly would like to feed into the alliance in some way. I’d like to start this by encouraging you to float the idea in a workshop at Mozfest 2015. Equally if you too would like to have a less bleak, diverse and collaborative future. Contact Toby in his post…
Its happening again… I swear everybody has caught on to the fact dating has changed and are studying it from a data point of view.
This time its Horizon who are sniffing around doing some dating research, and they actually have someone who really knows there stuff involved. Hannah Fry… yes the same woman who did the Tedtalk about the popularity in online dating. Ironically the most scientific dating experience was using her work around popularity at Manchester’s MOSI.
But even with Hannah Fry involved I’m nervous because of 2 experiences.
Saying all that, am I going to sign up?
@rachelclarke I'm going to sign up
— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) September 1, 2015
Yes I did… I really hope its not a mistake I will regret! Now time for 150 questions, in the style/vein of OkCupid. I have a feeling I could be in for something interesting…
Tinder (which I have written about and am now somewhat convinced will be seen as a bad bad joke in many years time) was recently written about in Vanity Fair and… Oh dear, tinder took to twitter to complain!
Hey @nancyjosales — that survey is incorrect. If you're interested in having a factual conversation, we're here. https://t.co/SLWlTLvJuf
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
The best deconstruction of the whole thing comes from David Evans over at onlinedating insider.
I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the VF article. Story after story about relationship-challenged New Yorkers. Men in New York treat women terribly and brag about it in Vanity Fair. Wow, you don’t say?
The VF article is a retread of a topic that’s been beaten to death by the media and dating bloggers for almost two years, but VF decided to hang out with a bunch of New Yorkers who rack up Tinder sex-mates like there’s no tomorrow and talk to them like they are adults or something. The writer clearly emerged from a cave last week and the first thing they did was go on a Tinder date and now she’s scarred for life.
Tinder is simply a throw back to old skool dating (when it was al about looks and not the personality), but it doesn’t stop a whole host of articles, posts and shows being written about it… even in mid 2015! Tinder has become the symbol of our misogynist culture much like how the game was a few years ago?
“It’s an eye-opener and validation of a woman’s worst fear. The guys are swiping right to hook up and it’s all just a game.” Give me a break. The women who enable men to behave this way are just as complicit in the degradation of modern courtship as Tinder is. And Tinder is at the bottom of the pile, along with Ashley Madison.
The gamification of online/social dating can be scary stuff which I’ll cover in my TedX Talk early next year… Don’t miss it, its going to be pretty wild…! Ironiclly it will be on Valentine day, so expect a blood path of broken hearts and trashed dreams
Its so clear there is a problem, as many people including Sherry Turkle and even comedian Aziz Ansari’s modern romance, identifies. They wonder about current social impact of not just its users but on the mating process as a whole!
David really gets into to the metric problem of the throw away action of a swipe.
What is the equivalent of a right-swipe on a dating service? Replied to emails? If I email you and you email me back, that’s a match. Sam Yagan at Match told me that years ago. Back when he was the Co-founder of OkCupid, and they always said Match wasn’t worth the money and nobody should have to pay for a dating site…
…Tinder’s definition of a match as two people physically moving their fingers about a quarter of an inch to the right compared with writing and responding to emails. Comparing swipes to responded-to emails is ridiculous; they’re not even comparable. But we’re talking about Tinder here, so anything goes.
How about this. Whenever two people like or favorite each other’s photos on a dating service, they are a match. Is that comparable to Tinder mutual swipes? I don’t know and I really don’t care anymore. And neither does anyone else, because all I read about in the media are stories about people on Tinder hooking up three times a week and 25 million matches a day.
He’s right, no body is really thinking about what the metrics mean when writing about Tinder. It might as well be 25 millions acorns! There is so much more David writes in the post but I love the ending line, and I’m really starting to agree (even though I know a few friends who have successfully had serious relationships via tinder)…
Tinder is the worst thing to ever happen to the online dating industry. End of story.
The psychology of dating in the technosexual era is a nice title and something I’ve been collecting stories about in my diigo group dating troubles. (diigo wants more money for it to be public, but you can look at this tag for most of it)
So my first reaction was… uhhh duhhh? Who doesn’t know this?
But then I have spoke and wrote about this to death.
Tinder is hardly original, yet it has taken the mobile dating market by storm: despite launching only last year, an estimated 450 million profiles are rated every day and membership is growing by 15% each week. More importantly, and in stark contrast with the overwhelmingly negative media reception, Tinder has managed to overcome the two big hurdles to online dating. First, Tinder is cool, at least to its users.
Indeed, whereas it is still somewhat embarrassing to confess to using EHarmony or Match.com, Tinderers are proud to demo the app at a dinner party, perhaps because the alternative – logging off and talking to others guests – is less appealing.
As I also said… It switched from physical first & personality second to personality first & physical second during the first phase of the internet’s affect on mating. But then came the fightback, starting with social dating. Now all the big sites all have a social dating app of some kind.
I found the Guardian piece interesting because of one two things…
You may wonder who on earth is he?
Let me refresh your memory…
This reminds me of a TV show we created a couple of years ago; we profiled over 3,000 singletons using state-of-the-art psychological tests and created 500 couples based on psychological compatibility… but ignored looks and race. When the couples finally met – even though they trusted the science of the matching process – they were 90% focused on looks and only decided to date a second time if they were deemed equally attractive or worthy of each other’s looks.
Yes remember the terrible dating show I took part on (not that one!) 2 years ago? Yep that one… saying the name still conjures up a certain amount of hate and distress. The year of making love!
Clearly, psychologists have a lot of work to do before they can convince daters that their algorithms are more effective.
I found this sadly ironic, especially with everything discovered over the last 5 years. I am hoping to present a spectrum of this and other issues as a conference talk in the very near future.
You can add Aziz Ansari to the growing list of people reconsidering the effects of our technology on our culture. He joins Sherry Turkle and Andrew Keen with his latest book…
Modern Romance, an interesting book full of interesting research about how people meet, and mate, in the modern world.
First heard about on the Freakonomics podcast…
I’ll be checking it out soon… as it looks like a good one.
…The rest of the book deals with online dating, dumping, sexting, cheating and snooping on your partner, all of which have been made easier by the rise of the smartphone and the private world we create behind its screen. This is territory already explored by theorists such as Danah Boyd and Sherry Turkle and OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, but Ansari helpfully masticates their findings down for a general audience. He is neither a tech evangelist nor a luddite: the gadgets might be constantly updating, but human nature is slower to change.
Simon Lumb while talking about leadership in the northern quarter today mentioned.Margaret Heffernan: Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work
Organizations are often run according to “the superchicken model,” where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. And yet, this isn’t what drives the most high-achieving teams. Business leader Margaret Heffernan observes that it is social cohesion — built every coffee break, every time one team member asks another for help — that leads over time to great results. It’s a radical rethink of what drives us to do our best work, and what it means to be a leader. Because as Heffernan points out: “Companies don’t have ideas. Only people do.”
Even before I watch the video I’m in agreement. This reminds me of my favourite cluetrain rule.. #7
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy and the result of which heterarchy
I’m sure one day I’ll bring all my favourite management and leadership clues together into some kind of manifesto or at least a blog.
Its hard to imagine all the things which have happened since the day I rode my scooter into the BBC Worldservice at Bush House. I remember driving along with Sarah on the back and being overtaken by about 10 police cars and in one hell of a rush. I was near Waterloo and I thought something isn’t right.
By the time I got into work, everybody was standing around watching the tvs. Nobody quite knew what was actually going on, but I remember not being able to leave for our own safety by about 1030.
As like now, I was a keen blogger and I blogged things I heard and read at the time.
Most of the links go nowhere but its really interesting to read out my thoughts following the everything which happened that day.
Well all I personally can say is, tomorrow I will be returning to work and will happily ride the train, tube or a bus. This terrible event points to the fact we helped America in the unjust war were still involved in, although a majority of people here were against it. I do worry that there maybe more attacks like this, but I wont let the fear take over my life in this wonderful multicultural city. The people who planed and executed the bombs are nut jobs and can claim to be of what ever religious background they want. But the fact remains that people who were killed and injured were of all faiths, religions, colour and background. Tomorrow we shall see both sides using the London blasts for there own means but also tomorrow we shall also see a city going back to work with its head up high. Yes I do sometimes love London.
Indeed! It was a scary time to be in London but really focused my views on the war and the government. 10 years later, I feel not much has changed in government I feel, actually its worst. My follow on blog also sounds angry and upset at the same time. Not sure if a year later I felt less upset or just more accepting of what happen? At least the video still exists on archive.org.
So sad to know peoples lives were lost and many many more people are still affected by the result of the ideology of a few nut jobs.
You know how I’m very interested in the ethical dimension of services and data. Data portability is something I have a long history with and alongside that, there is related idea of having access to delete.
Of course this can be very controversial like the much talked about, right to be forgotten.
Its intriguing to look at the online dating world where data is thrown about with little regard for the users.
Turns out, there are many people who think deleting a dating app from your phone is the same as deleting your profile – but it isn’t.
Dating apps and online dating sites make it kind of tricky to get rid of you altogether – after all, they attract people (and investors) based on user numbers, so they are not motivated to make it obvious how to delete your account.
Okcupid plays by the rules while eHarmony requires a web action and then a email to confirm. Hinge a mobile dating app, requires you to use a desktop browser before you can delete it the account on your mobile via uninstalling the app.
With Tinder, I disconnected my Facebook account from Tinder meaning the account will be rejected by Facebook if it was started again. Its not elegant but saves me having to install Tinder again. I kind of refuse to install it again.
Makes you wonder how many loops some of the other dating sites and apps will make you jump through…?
