Hey, we made it through another week! Here are five links and a video:
Eddie Smith takes the history of mathematical typography to some really fascinating places: I think it's critically important for those of us that write math to have at least a basic awareness of the history of mathematical typesetting. For me, knowing this history has had several practical benefits. It's made me more grateful for the writing tools I have today—tools that I can use to simplify and improve the presentation of quantitative concepts to other actuaries. It's also motivated me to continue to strive for elegance in the presentation of math—something I feel like my profession has largely neglected in the Microsoft Office era of the last twenty years.
Karen Wickre explains why "Google Bombs Are Our New Normal": No single company, no matter how massive and wealthy, can hire its way out of a steady gusher of bad information or false and manipulative ads. Mark Zuckerberg's announcements in May and early October that Facebook will hire a total of 4,000 people to "monitor content"—flag, escalate and remove problematic items—doesn't seem very savvy for any tech company priding itself on its ability to scale.
Last weekend Paul Lewis in the Guardian had a post about the ways some in Silicon Valley are pulling back from the phones and apps they created: The most seductive design, Harris explains, exploits the same psychological susceptibility that makes gambling so compulsive: variable rewards. When we tap those apps with red icons, we don't know whether we'll discover an interesting email, an avalanche of "likes," or nothing at all. It is the possibility of disappointment that makes it so compulsive. It's this that explains how the pull-to-refresh mechanism, whereby users swipe down, pause and wait to see what content appears, rapidly became one of the most addictive and ubiquitous design features in modern technology. "Each time you're swiping down, it's like a slot machine," Harris says. "You don't know what's coming next. Sometimes it's a beautiful photo. Sometimes it's just an ad."
Not of General Interest has several strategies to try when the news is bad, as it always is now: Figure out an academic version of the Serenity Prayer. As in "grant me the serenity to hear about another time-sucking initiative on which they claim to want our input, the strength to read between the lines, and the wisdom to know that it's already a done deal and I don't have to pay any attention to it."
Robert Talbert has a provocative post on "Returning to analog and putting digital in its place": the mere reference of analog brought back memories of how these things make me happy in a way that digital technology, as fascinating as it is, does not. For example I used to love getting Moleskine notebooks and writing in them with fountain pens. Finding handwritten journal entries from important moments in my past reminds me of who I am far beyond stumbling across an Evernote note I wrote years ago.
This week's video is Culture Abuse's "So Busted":
PS: My group is hiring an instructional technologist. Maybe you want to apply, or know someone who does?
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