Aaron Gustafson's Blog, page 11

#trypod

This month, podcasters across the globe are urging folks to share their favorite listens with friends and family using the hashtag #trypod. I���ve been on a real podcast tear lately and there are so many awesome programs to listen to, I thought it might make sense to compile some of my favorites here.

Note To Self

Hosted by Manoush Zomorodi, this is a podcast about the intersection of technology and humanity. I���m obsessed with Manoush���s friendly, inclusive tone and her often interesting and very personal takes on a wide variety of topics. Here are a few recent gems:

The Man Who Invented Facebook Ad Tracking Is Not Sorry
Introducing: The Privacy Paradox - Do yourself a favor and listen to the whole project series.
New Year. Same Old You.


Code Switch

This is an excellent show about race and identity. I���ve always been actively working to better understand other cultures, but with Oscar in my life, I feel an even greater desire to recognize and appreciate the differences and similarities we all have. I hope it���s making me a better father. Regardless, I���m learning a lot and loving it. Recommended listening:

Safety-Pin Solidarity: With Allies, Who Benefits?
Hold Up! Time For An Explanatory Comma
The Code Switch Guide To Handling Casual Racism
Say My Name, Say My Name (Correctly, Please)


99% Invisible

This show has been a darling of the design set for years, but I���ve only recently tuned in. I love it because I learn something new and interesting in every episode��� even on topics with which I���m already familiar. There are so many great episodes it���s hard to pick just a few to recommend, but I���ll give it a shot:

Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
The Trend Forecast
Project Cybersyn
The Nutshell Studies
Perfect Security


Reply All

I���ve been listening to PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman since their days running TLDR, so naturally I followed them over to their new(er) venture on Gimlet Media. Reply All is ostensibly ���a show about the Internet���, but it takes me into parts of the Web I���rather surprisingly, given I���ve spent over 20 years building it���am not all that familiar with. I���ve thoroughly enjoyed every episode, especially those in the ���Super Tech Support��� series. I���m also a big ���Yes-Yes-No��� fan. Some favorites:

Zardulu
Voyage into Pizzagate
The Grand Tapestry Of Pepe
Exit & Return, Part I & Part II
Anxiety Box


NPR Politics

I���ve been a little obsessed with politics for the better part of the last two decades, so when I discovered the NPR Politics podcast, I was stoked. I appreciate their balanced take on current events, especially when they are placed in historical context (often by mainstay Ron Elving). All of the hosts and correspondents are stellar (as to be expected form NPR, I suppose), but I have to admit I���m missing Sam Sanders and Asma Khalid more than a little bit. Most episodes are news-driven so don���t have a long shelf-life. That said, I highly recommend ���Covering 2016 As A Muslim���.

Other worthwhile podcasts that are also in heavy rotation on my phone include (in no particular order)

Benjamen Walker���s Theory of Everything,
Shop Talk Show,
Big Web Show,
Radio Lab, and
Crimetown.

Do you have a favorite podcast to share? Leave a comment of webmention and I���ll be sure to check it out.

Moved from Octopress to Jekyll

A while back I mentioned my desire to move this site from Octopress to Jekyll. I liked Octopress when I re-christened this site, but I didn���t really see much benefit to moving to Octopress 3 over stripping away the Octopress 2 bits and going with a core Jekyll install.

Octopress was built on top of Jekyll, so I figured the move would be fairly easy. On the whole, it was. I was able to move the content over without too much difficulty. I ended up having to back out some of the Octopress plugins and either write the functionality myself or look for alternatives. Thankfully none were a terribly big deal.

The only major change was to the overall structure of the site. I opted to move my blog and linkblog into Jekyll collections, which worked out pretty well. I opted to go with the newer jekyll-paginate-v2 gem to build out the archive pages for each and used jekyll-tagging to generate the tag archive pages. In the process, I also moved all of my post ���categories��� over to being ���tags���, since that was more appropriate to how I was using them anyway.

It took a few days to get it to the point where I feel I can merge the Jekyll-only branch back and publish for the first time, but I think it is pretty stable. That said, there are likely some bugs yet to be discovered. Please let me know if you find one; more sets of eyes are always better.

Moved From Octopress to Jekyll

A while back I mentioned my desire to move this site from Octopress to Jekyll. I liked Octopress when I re-christened this site, but I didn���t really see much benefit to moving to Octopress 3 over stripping away the Octopress 2 bits and going with a core Jekyll install.

Octopress was built on top of Jekyll, so I figured the move would be fairly easy. On the whole, it was. I was able to move the content over without too much difficulty. I ended up having to back out some of the Octopress plugins and either write the functionality myself or look for alternatives. Thankfully none were a terribly big deal.

The only major change was to the overall structure of the site. I opted to move my blog and linkblog into Jekyll collections, which worked out pretty well. I opted to go with the newer jekyll-paginate-v2 gem to build out the archive pages for each and used [jekyll-tagging](https://github.com/pattex/jekyll-tagging) to generate the tag archive pages. In the process, I also moved all of my post ���categories��� over to being ���tags���, since that was more appropriate to how I was using them anyway.

It took a few days to get it to the point where I feel I can merge the Jekyll-only branch back and publish for the first time, but I think it is pretty stable. That said, there are likely some bugs yet to be discovered. Please let me know if you find one; more sets of eyes are always better.

Why Do You Love the Web?

A few weeks back, I put out the call for a mentee for 2017. As part of the application process, I asked folks to publicly discuss why they love the Web. The applicants shared some amazing stories, anecdotes, and experiences in those posts and I wanted to take a moment to share them with you.1 I present them here, in order of submission.

Max Cantor: Growing Up Online: Penpals and PHP

I still remember the first time a friend with a different provider gave me their email address. I was used to the cozy confines of AOL, where emailing another user required only their ���screen name������what we think of today as the part that goes before the @ sign. (Mine was Maxinator1.)

���What���s this funny stuff at the end, after your screen name?��� I asked.

���That���s the domain. Mine���s compuserve dot com. Yours must be AOL dot com.���

���What? You can���t not be on AOL.���

���Why not?���

���How do you look at keywords?���

���I don���t!���

Rina Henderson: The web. Why do I like it?

Believe it or not, the invention of the web was not to give me something to do when I grew up.

Amberley Romo: The Road So Far, Pt II

I see power in the web for the very real capacity it has for good ��� communication and connection, access to communication, and on and on. And just like magic, it can be wielded in the interest of the light or the darkness (and those lines aren���t always the clearest). I want to do what I can to use it for good.

river kanies: Why I chose to become a web startup consultant

I will never stop learning, and I will never stop putting myself out of my financial and intellectual comfort zone. I think that, ultimately, this attitude will lead me to be very successful, even if it means being dirt poor for the next few years :}

Manuel Matuzovic: This is not a New Year���s resolution

Web design and web development are not (just) about writing the most flexible, reactive and dynamic app, impressing colleagues and clients, and earning awards. First and foremost it���s about people using our products. I believe that from time to time we all need to be reminded of that fact.

Max B��ck: Three Goals for 2017

I can still remember what it was like to build my first website. I had absolutely no clue how to do stuff, it was all trial and error. But going back and forth between blogs, tutorials and stack overflow, watching other people work, shamelessly copying bits and pieces���I improved.

The fact that I can just hit view source on any website and see how it���s made still amazes me.

Altough I have a degree in web development now, I can honestly say that I learnt most of what I do by soaking up information available on the open web.

This is only made possible by lots of talented people who not only produce great work, but dedicate their time and energy to show others how to do it, too. I don���t know any other profession with such an open exchange of knowledge.

People from around the world actually work together on open-source projects, just to build something that others can use. Top developers in the field will share their latest findings publicly in carefully crafted tutorials and code examples on Github.

Think about how amazing that is���an entire industry where you can learn every last secret of the trade for free���all you need is dedication and an internet connection.

Kyle Jones: Looking Ahead���and to the Side

���Inter-Connectivity.��� It���s a word I learned from an administrator at work. He challenged his team to reach out and reach through to other organizations. Organizations that are probably striving for the same goal that we are, but are too focused to look left or right to see others that are trying to do the same thing.

���

It���s why I love the web. The Internet seems to have a knack for inter-connectivity (hyperlinking, search results, purchase recommendations, @mentions, etc). It doesn���t come as naturally for humans at times. It takes risking assumptions and being intentional. Sometimes we need more of that spiderweb mentality and reach out, not just up or down. My administrator was telling us that, yes, we do a great work, but don���t be blinded to think we���re the only ones. Just imagine what good we could do together with more partners that don���t exactly look or function just like us.

Ste Grainer: Seeking Mentorship

I started making websites in the mid-90s when I was still in high school. I was fascinated that I could put something up on the web and people anywhere in the world could see it if they knew where to look. That feeling still inspires me, even after 20 years.

Ivan Zusko: Mentor: Be or not to be

Every time you are revising your knowledge and things you used to accept as ���it is so simply because it is so���. And very often can happen that during a process of your professional evolution (in fact does not matter what kind of profession you belong to), you were missing some obvious details which could make your present life as the established professional much easier. The most trivial question can open your eyes on some hidden secrets which were escaping from your attention just because there were dozens and dozens of the different and the more interesting things that seemed more important at that time.

Joanne Daudier: How I Got Started in Tech

What I love about being a developer is that I���m always learning something new and meeting other more senior devs that are so willing to lend a helping hand to newbies.

Tyler Malone: State of a Career

I love what I do now because my experience in development has been diametrically opposed to that previous job. Solutions to problems are almost never a 1:1 ratio, collaboration is embraced, the pursuit of continual learning is highly encouraged, and the communities I���ve been a part of have been thoroughly supportive.

Tabassum Mohamed Fakier: Career goals

I thought this was going to be difficult to answer, but it���s actually quite simple - albeit long-winded. I love the immense potential it represents; allowing people to help themselves, allowing people to help others directly, fostering connections in lieu of constant personal contact, delivering new experiences, helping people do good things for free - I could go on. There are just so, so, so many reasons why the web is important. The web extends beyond just websites for me: I used it as a crutch to overcome social anxieties and excessive shyness. I taught myself how to code using resources my parents would not afford on paper. I expressed myself. I entertained myself. I made friends when it was difficult for me to maintain friendships at school - and some of these individuals are close friends of mine seven years later. Heck, the web even introduced to me to my soulmate who is with me in Australia. I loved being on the web and I always wanted to be a creator on it.

There are so many lines being crossed for the sake of monetisation, for the sake of control, and I want this to change. Ultimately, I really want to give back in honour of the faceless strangers that made a lot of my life happen the way it did. The web should be better for everyone.

Brian Bell: The Puddle Jumper

As a kid, I rarely played with a toy the same way twice. When I got older I spent my waking hours flipping, spinning, and grinding at the skatepark. In school, I pursued graphic design. A few months into my first nine-to-five, I discovered the web.

Every decision along the way was made with that question top-of-mind, ���What else can I do with this?���

Todd Libby: Mentoring

I want to keep learning until my children send me into a home, or even when I finally take that dirt nap I hear about.

I truly wish I could mentor all of these folks this year, but I���m only one guy with a day job and a family I���d like to see on occasion. This is going to be one heck of a tough choice. I���d like to take a moment to thank each and every one of these folks (and all of the other applicants) for sharing their stories and their goals with me, with us.

I urge you to read their posts and maybe write one of your own.

In other words, there were so many great applications that this will buy me some more time to make my decision :-) ↩

Crossing a Border

If you travel abroad for work, you may have some concerns about border crossings, based on recent news coverage. I know I do. I���m not a lawyer, but I���ve been researching quite a bit and asking for opinions and recommendations. Below is a summary of the advice I���ve been given. I���m providing it here in case it might be of use to you.

Full disclosure: I have been held at a border before. I was entering Canada to lead a training for a client and did not have the necessary visa. My passport was taken and I was escorted to a holding area. It was terrifying, but ultimately ended up okay���I paid for the visa and entered Canada without any further incident. I realized, once I had a few minutes to gather myself, that I was moved to the holding area to enable the border officers to expedite processing of the other passengers. It was triage, nothing personal against me. Once I realized that, my nerves calmed down a bit. Still��� it���s not something I���d like to repeat. I realize some of you reading this may have had much worse experiences at a border. Being a white male, I know I���m far less likely to be searched, questioned, etc. I���m sharing my story not to diminish any experience you have had, but merely to provide a little background about my experience in relation to this topic.

The information below outlines the rights of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under federal law. It applies whether you are a U.S. citizen or not. Other countries may vary, but I suspect most exercise similar rights.

Officers are permitted to search your belongings, including your electronic devices. They can also ask you to unlock devices without having probable cause. The reasoning, whether you agree with it or not, is that your privacy is less important than protecting the country you are seeking to enter.
The Officer has the authority to detain your device. If they do, it���s typically for a few days. They may also gain access without your consent, even if you don���t provide your password. If they detain your device, make sure you politely ask for information about how to get your device returned to you. If it���s a corporate-issued device, be sure to notify your manager and IT organization immediately.
You do not have to give your passwords. That said, the entry process may go easier if you do. Remember: Once over the border, you can always change your password. It���s unclear how an Officer may react if you tell them you don���t know the password they want, which you legitimately may not if you use a password manager like 1Password or LastPass. This may be further complicated (and frustrating to the officer) if your device does not have your password manager installed.
Keep your eyes on the prize. You booked the trip, paid for the travel, completed the journey, and are almost at your destination. Keep reminding yourself of that. As annoying or unnerving as border crossing may be, in all likelihood, you���re nearly there. It can absolutely be both frightening and frustrating to be held up at a border, even when you���ve got nothing to hide. That can be compounded if the Officer you���re dealing with isn���t the most friendly. But remember that they are paid to be suspicious and skeptical of you. It���s rarely personal. Try not to let aggressive or rude questions rattle you. Take a breath and show them you���re not trying to make their job any harder than it has to be. Remember, they���re human too; they probably don���t relish digging through your personal effects.
You can ask questions. If an Officer asks you to do something you are uncomfortable with, you can politely ask them why it���s necessary. You can also ask for further clarification from a supervisor. Similarly, if things aren���t going well with the Officer you���re in front of���perhaps you feel intimidated or can see your personalities clashing to a point that will not work out well for you���you can ask to work with another Officer. You could, for instance, explain that you would feel more comfortable working with an Officer of your gender. Just remember, being polite and professional will go a long way towards easing tensions all around.
If you do not comply with an Officer���s legal request, you may be detained for questioning. If you are not a citizen, you may also be denied entry temporarily or banned permanently.
Tell the Officer if your device contains sensitive information. If your device contains sensitive or confidential data���for instance, if it belongs to your employer, contains trade secrets or Personally Identifiable Information, or client information shared under NDA���politely inform the Officer and respectfully request that the sensitive information be handled appropriately. If the Officer accesses this information, report the incident to your employer or client as soon as you are able to do so.
Travel with as few devices as possible. This is good for a number of reasons���theft being chief among them. You might even consider having a specific phone, laptop, or tablet that you use only for travel and that has the least amount of sensitive data on it. For instance, I have an older iPad mini I travel with for entertainment purposes only. It contains no email, calendars, or contacts and has no social media apps installed. If searched, the most they���d have access to is my Hulu queue and Netflix history.
Keep a paper backup of your itinerary and key contacts. It can be tempting to rely on tools like TripIt to manage your travel, but if your device is confiscated and you are detained or are allowed to cross the border, you will need that information. Make sure the key contacts you printed out include your legal representation (or your company���s), should you need it.
Carry a small notebook and a crayon in your travel wallet. If you are detained or your possessions are taken, you will often be able to keep your wallet with you.1 Keep a small notebook and a crayon in there. Moleskin and Field Notes offer some pretty solid options when it comes to slim notebooks. And although a crayon is a crude writing implement, it is also unlikely to be considered a weapon, which means you will likely be able to keep it. You should keep your itinerary and contacts backup in this notebook. Use the notebook to record the details of your detention (with names and times if you know them); if anything goes amiss or poorly (or even well!), you will need those names to escalate your experience (or provide positive feedback). The notebook will also be a welcome doodling companion on the off-chance your detained for several hours and are bored out of your mind.

Regardless of your thoughts on how the U.S. or other countries handle things at the border, the law is the law. If you are seeking to cross a border (even your own), you���re subject to that law. I am not saying this because I agree with everything we in the U.S. or other nations do, but I sincerely believe you will do more good advocating for changes to border policy with the politicians who write the laws than with the Officer whose lane you happened to find yourself in.

One additional note: Most border protection agencies do have comment forms you can use to provide feedback about your experience. Regardless of whether you are permitted entry to the country, you should file a report if you feel you have been mistreated by an Officer. Similarly, if you had a particularly helpful and courteous Officer, consider using the same form to praise their behavior or attitude; that���s probably not the kind of feedback they get often and would likely be much appreciated.

Further Reading


���What Are Your Rights if Border Agents Want to Search Your Phone?��� by Daniel Victor, the New York Times, 14 February 2017
���Give Us Your Passwords���, by Kaveh Waddell, the Atlantic, 10 February 2017
���Social Media at the Border: Can Agents Ask for Your Facebook Feed?��� by Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 08 February 2017
���We Already Screen Cell Phones At The Border, Will Social Media Be Any Different?��� by Kalev Leetaru, Forbes, 29 January 2017
���Fear Materialized: Border Agents Demand Social Media Data from Americans��� by Sophia Cope, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 25 January 2017
���Immigration regulations worldwide��� from Swiss Air
���Skip the Lines: Expedited Security and Immigration Programs��� by SmarterTravel in the Huffington Post, 7 October 2013 (updated 23 January 2014)
���The 10 Best & Worst U.S. Airports for Immigration Wait Times��� by Darren Murph for Sherman���s Travel, 1 August 2013


Thanks!

Many thanks to Rachel Nabors, who had a terrible experience at the UK border a while back, for providing some excellent feedback on this piece. Her insights were invaluable and her tips regarding the travel wallet and notebook & crayon were fantastic!

Make sure your travel wallet doesn���t have a long strap or, if it does, make sure it���s detachable. Some Officers might view the strap as a potential weapon and use it as an excuse to relieve you of your wallet too. ↩

Any Advice on Moving From Octopress to Jekyll?

Next Tuesday I���m planning to take the day to do a little refresh on this site. The largest part of that effort will be moving this project off of Octopress to Jekyll. I���m not expecting it to be a huge challenge���Jekyll underpins Octopress anyway���but I���m sure there are some gotchas I should look out for. If you���ve made the leap yourself in the past and have any advice or recommended reading, please leave a comment or Web Mention.

In case you���re curious why I���m making the shift, it���s pretty simple:

Octopress development seems relatively stalled;
Octopress includes dependencies I don���t really need;
I���ve been writing a lot of Jekyll plugins and maintaining them without using them on the latest Jekyll is challenging;
I���m comfortable writing my own Rake commands; and
This is the big one: Incremental builds.

I���m hopeful this shift will make it easier for me to get content published more quickly and more reliably. I may even move my build processes into Travis CI to further offload the work. But I���m getting ahead of myself��� let���s see how Tuesday goes first.

Mentorship

I didn���t get to where I am in my life and career on my own. I have a ton of respect and admiration for the folks who���ve helped and mentored me along the way. Molly Holzschlag took me under her wing and taught me so much about public speaking and selflessly working for a better Web. Jeffrey Zeldman made a place for me at A List Apart, heavily influenced my writing, invited me onto his team at Happy Cog, and has both supported and promoted my work for well over a decade now. Jeremy Keith collaborated with me early on and has provided invaluable guidance to me over the years. And these are but a few of the dozens upon dozens of folks I owe my career to and, if I���m being honest, helped me discover my passion.

Recognizing all of this, I���ve made a concerted effort to ���pay it forward��� by finding opportunities for others to hone their craft and improve as professionals. In some cases it���s been recommending them as conference speakers, introducing them to publishers, recommending them for jobs, asking them to collaborate on projects, or simply providing advice and guidance for their careers or their companies. To date, most of these efforts have been one-offs. For a while now I���ve been wanting to work more intensely with one person, but I needed to get settled into my relatively new role at Microsoft (as well as my new role as a father) first.

I���m ready now.

I am looking for someone to mentor in 2017. If you���re interested in working with me throughout 2017, I���m accepting ���applications��� for the slot through the end of January. As of right now, I���m only comfortable committing to one mentee for 2017, but once I see how it���s going, I may opt to take on additional mentees in the future.

What are you looking for in a mentee?

To me, it doesn���t matter to me where you are in your career��� no matter how long we���ve been doing something, there���s always room for improvement. When I think about my ideal mentee, I���m looking for someone who���s passionate about the Web and who I think I can do some good for. I don���t care how young or old you are or how long you���ve worked on the Web. I firmly believe we can always benefit from a mentorship.

Similarly, it doesn���t matter to me where you live nor does it matter to me how good your English is (though it���s probably better than you give yourself credit for). If you happen to be local to the Southeastern U.S. or somewhere I���m traveling over the next year, we���ll definitely spend some time getting together in person, but that is by no means a requirement. Email��� Skype��� Hangouts��� I���m happy to work with you no matter where you are.

How do I apply?

In order to apply, all I ask is that you to write a public post somewhere on the Web that discusses why you love the Web, where you���re at in your career, and what your goals are for the coming year. I���m not looking for a particular length or anything, just trying to get a sense of you, your passions, and your interests.

Once you���ve done that, use this site���s contact form to send me the link, along with a brief write-up as to why you���d like me to mentor you. In particular I���m interested to hear where our passions overlap and how you think I can help you. I want to make sure we are a good fit. And be honest��� if you want me as a mentor because of the connections I have, say that; I appreciate honesty.

Anyway, that���s it. No big hoops to jump through. I���ll keep the lines open through Tuesday, January 31st in whatever your local timezone is. I look forward to getting to know you and taking one of you under my wing this year.

Lessons in Averaging

In the work that we do on the Web (as well as in our daily lives), we���re often confronted, informed, or judged based on averages. I never really stopped to think about it, beyond being bugged by the fact that averages aren���t truly representative of reality. Then I listened to 99% Invisible���s episode ���On Average���. It was incredibly enlightening and the stories shared in that episode provide sage wisdom that is very relevant to the work that we do.

Do you know where our fascination with averages began? It all started with Adolphe Qu��telet, a Belgian mathematician and astronomer:

In the 1830s, astronomers were some of the only people that regularly calculated averages, since early telescopes were extremely imprecise. To obtain more accurate data for say, tracking the orbits of planets, astronomers would take multiple measurements (all of which were slightly different) add them together, then divide by the number of observations to get a better approximation of the true value.

Quetelet decided to apply this tool to people, starting with Scottish soldiers��� chest sizes. Turns out the average chest size of a Scottish soldier in the 1830s was 39.75 inches. File that one away for Pub Trivia.

Quetelet believed that the average was the ���true��� size of something��� something that we should strive for or that nature would attempt to create. The Platonic ideal if you will:

In Quetelet���s mind, human averages had a certain moral mandate. By his logic, if everyone were optimally fed and lived under the same environmental conditions, they would be average. And this is what society should be striving for: the continual improvement of the average of the group.

We look at averages all the time in our work. Some, like average Time To Interactive (TTI), are useful measurements that allow us to improve our work; others, like the ���average��� user are decidedly less so. The ���average��� person (or dog or flower) is a myth. Everyone and everything is unique to some equally unique degree. Even mass-produced objects have variance.

Designing for the ���average��� user is incredibly problematic. The episode I mentioned captured this perfectly in a story about the U.S. Army���s design of airplane cockpits:

[I]n 1926, when the Army designed its first airplane cockpit, they measured the physical dimensions of male pilots and calculated the average measurement of their height, weight, arm-length and other dimensions.

The results determined the size and shape of the seat, the distance to the pedals and the stick, and even the shape of the flight helmets. This mean that, in part, pilots were selected based on their ability to fit into the cockpit designed for the average 1920s man.

This worked more or less up until World War II, when the Army began recruiting hundreds of new pilots to expand its air forces (which became a separate branch of the military in 1947). But with the birth and expansion of the Air Force came a decline in performance and a rash of deaths. Even with no war, pilots continued to die during training, as they were unable to control their planes.

The high death rate in the Air Force was a mystery for many years, but after blaming the pilots and their training programs, the military finally realized that the cockpit itself was to blame, that it didn���t actually fit most pilots.

In 1950, the Air Force sent Gilbert S. Daniels out to collect ten measurements from thousands of airmen���yes, they were all men at the time���across the U.S. in order to establish a new average. After collecting the data, Daniels got curious and decided to see how many of the airmen he measured hit the average on all ten measurements. Not a single one. How about three of the measurements? Less than five percent. He realized that in designing for an average, they were, in fact, designing for no one. Based on this discovery, the Air Force commissioned new equipment that including features like adjustable foot pedals, helmet straps, flight suits, and seats. And, wonder of wonders, pilot performance improved dramatically.

When we design, we need to be cognizant of the variety of human experience and plan accordingly. For our work to be successful, we need to accommodate the adjustments our users require for them to be successful. Responsive layouts, adaptive interfaces, support for assistive technologies��� all of these approaches enable our work to go further by enabling it to be tailored to the permanent, temporary, and/or situational needs of our users.

All of this is to say, this episode made me an even more ardent believer in the idea of progressive enhancement and the continuum of experience it enables. You should go listen to it now, I promise there���s more to the story.

[Insert Clickbait Headline About Progressive Enhancement Here]

Late last week, Josh Korr, a project manager at Viget, posted at length about what he sees as a fundamental flaw with the argument for progressive enhancement. In reading the post, it became clear to me that Josh really doesn���t have a good grasp on progressive enhancement or the reasons its proponents think it���s a good philosophy to follow. Despite claiming to be ���an expert at spotting fuzzy rhetoric and teasing out what���s really being said���, Josh makes a lot of false assumptions and inferences. My response would not have fit in a comment, so here it is���

Before I dive in, it���s worth noting that Josh admits that he is not a developer. As such, he can���t really speak to the bits where the rubber really meets the road with respect to progressive enhancement. Instead, he focuses on the argument for it, which he sees as a purely moral one��� and a flimsily moral one at that.

I���m also unsure as to how Josh would characterize me. I don���t think I fit his mold of PE ���hard-liners���, but since I���ve written two books and countless articles on the subject and he quotes me in the piece, I���ll go out on a limb and say he probably thinks I am.

Ok, enough with the preliminaries, let���s jump over to his piece���

Right out of the gate, Josh demonstrates a fundamental misread of progressive enhancement. If I had to guess, it probably stems from his source material, but he sees progressive enhancement as a moral argument:

It���s a moral imperative that everything on the web should be available to everyone everywhere all the time. Failing to achieve ��� or at least strive for ��� that goal is inhumane.

Now he���s quick to admit that no one has ever explicitly said this, but this is his takeaway from the articles and posts he���s read. It���s a pretty harsh, black & white, you���re either with us or against us sort of statement that has so many people picking sides and lobbing rocks and other heavy objects at anyone who disagrees with them. And everyone he quotes in the piece as examples of why he thinks this is progressive enhancement���s central conceit is much more of an ���it depends��� sort of person.

To clarify, progressive enhancement is neither moral or amoral. It���s a philosophy that recognizes the nature of the Web as a medium and asks us to think about how to build products that are robust and capable of reaching as many potential customers as possible. It isn���t concerned with any particular technology, it simply asks that we look at each tool we use with a critical eye and consider both its benefits and drawbacks. And it���s certainly not anti-JavaScript.

I could go on, but let���s circle back to Josh���s piece. Off the bat he makes some pretty bold claims about what he intends to prove in this piece:

Progressive enhancement is a philosophical, moral argument disguised as a practical approach to web development.This makes it impossible to engage with at a practical level.When exposed to scrutiny, that moral argument falls apart.Therefore, if PEers can���t find a different argument, it���s ok for everyone else to get on with their lives.

For the record, I plan to address his arguments quite practically. As I mentioned, progressive enhancement is not solely founded on morality, though that can certainly be viewed as a facet. The reality is that progressive enhancement is quite pragmatic, addressing the Web as it exists not as we might hope that it exists or how we experience it.

Over the course of a few sections���which I wish I could link to directly, but alas, the headings don���t have unique ids���he examines a handful of quotes and attempts to tease out their hidden meaning by following the LSAT���s Logic Reasoning framework. We���ll start with the first one.

Working without JavaScript

Statement
���When we write JavaScript, it���s critical that we recognize that we can���t be guaranteed it will run.��� ��� Aaron Gustafson���If you make your core tasks dependent on JavaScript, some of your potential users will inevitably be left out in the cold.��� ��� Jeremy Keith

Unstated assumptions:

Because there is some chance JavaScript won���t run, we must always account for that chance.Core tasks can always be achieved without JavaScript.It is always bad to ignore some potential users for any reason.

His first attempt at teasing out the meaning of these statements comes close, but ignores some critical word choices. First off, neither Jeremy nor I speak in absolutes. As I mentioned before, we (and the other folks he quotes) all believe that the right technical choices for a project depend on specifically on the purpose and goals of that specific project. In other words it depends. We intentionally avoid absolutist words like ���always��� (which, incidentally, Josh has no problem throwing around, on his own or on our behalf).

For the development of most websites, the benefits of following a progressive enhancement philosophy far outweigh the cost of doing so. I���m hoping Josh will take a few minutes to read my post on the true cost of progressive enhancement in relation to actual client projects. As a project manager, I hope he���d find it enlightening and useful.

It���s also worth noting that he���s not considering the reason we make statements like this: Many sites rely 100% on JavaScript without needing to. The reasons why sites (like news sites, for instance) are built to be completely reliant on a fragile technology is somewhat irrelevant. But what isn���t irrelevant is that it happens. Often. That���s why I said ���it���s critical that we recognize that we can���t be guaranteed it will run��� (emphasis mine). A lack of acknowledgement of JavaScript���s fragility is one of the main problems I see with web development today. I suspect Jeremy and everyone else quoted in the post feels exactly the same. To be successful in a medium, you need to understand the medium. And the (sad, troubling, interesting) reality of the Web is that we don���t control a whole lot. We certainly control a whole lot less than we often believe we do.

As I mentioned, I disagree with his characterization of the argument for progressive enhancement being a moral one. Morality can certainly be one argument for progressive enhancement, and as a proponent of egalitarianism I certainly see that. But it���s not the only one. If you���re in business, there are a few really good business-y reasons to embrace progressive enhancement:

Legal: Progressive enhancement and accessibility are very closely tied. Whether brought by legitimate groups or opportunists, lawsuits over the accessibility of your web presence can happen; following progressive enhancement may help you avoid them.
Development Costs: As I mentioned earlier, progressive enhancement is a more cost-effective approach, especially for long-lived projects. Here���s that link again: The True Cost of Progressive Enhancement.
Reach: The more means by which you enable users to access your products, information, etc., the more opportunities you create to earn their business. Consider that no one thought folks would buy big-ticket items on mobile just a few short years ago. Boy, were they wrong. Folks buy cars, planes, and more from their tablets and smartphones on the regular these days.
Reliability: When your site is down, not only do you lose potential customers, you run the risk of losing existing ones too. There have been numerous incidents where big sites got hosed due to JavaScript dependencies and they didn���t have a fallback. Progressive enhancement ensures users can always do what they came to your site to do, even if it���s not the ideal experience.

Hmm, no moral arguments for progressive enhancement there��� but let���s continue.

Some experience vs. no experience

Statement
���[With a PE approach,] Older browsers get a clunky experience with full page refreshes, but that���s still much, much better than giving them nothing at all.��� ��� Jeremy Keith���If for some reason JavaScript breaks, the site should still work and look good. If the CSS doesn���t load correctly, the HTML content should still be there with meaningful hyperlinks.��� ��� Nick Pettit

Unstated assumptions:

A clunky experience is always better than no experience.HTML content ��� i.e. text, images, unstyled forms ��� is the most important part of most websites.

You may be surprised to hear that I have no issue with Josh���s distillation here. Clunky is a bit of a loaded word, but I agree that an experience is better than no experience, especially for critical tasks like checking your bank account, registering to vote, making a purchase from an online shop. In my book, I talk a little bit about a strange thing we experienced when A List Apart stopped delivering CSS to Netscape Navigator 4 way back in 2001:

We assume that those who choose to keep using 4.0 browsers have reasons for doing so; we also assume that most of those folks don���t really care about ���design issues.��� They just want information, and with this approach they can still get the information they seek. In fact, since we began hiding the design from non���compliant browsers in February 2001, ALA���s Netscape 4 readership has increased, from about 6% to about 11%.

Folks come to our web offerings for a reason. Sometimes its to gather information, sometimes it���s to be entertained, sometimes it���s to make a purchase. It���s in our best interest to remove every potential obstacle that can preclude them from doing that. That���s good customer service.

Project priorities

Statement
���Question any approach to the web where fancy features for a few are prioritized & basic access is something you���ll ���get to��� eventually.��� ��� Tim Kadlec

Unstated assumptions:

Everything beyond HTML content is superfluous fanciness.It���s morally problematic if some users cannot access features built with JavaScript.

Not to put words in Tim���s mouth (like Josh is here), but what Tim���s quote is discussing is hype-driven (as opposed to user-centered) design. We (as developers) often prioritize our own convenience/excitement/interest over our users��� actual needs. It doesn���t happen all the time (note I said often), but it happens frequently enough to require us to call it out now and again (as Tim did here).

As for the ���unstated assumptions���, I know for a fact that Tim would never call ���everything beyond HTML��� superfluous. What he is saying is that we should question���as in weigh the pros and cons���of each and every design pattern and development practice we consider. It���s important to do this because there are always tradeoffs. Some considerations that should be on your list include:

Download speed;
Time to interactivity;
Interaction performance;
Perceived performance;
Input methods;
User experience;
Screen size & orientation;
Visual hierarchy;
Aesthetic design;
Contrast;
Readability;
Text equivalents of rich interfaces for visually impaired users and headless UIs;
Fallbacks; and
Copywriting.

This list is by no means exhaustive nor is it in any particular order; it���s what came immediately to mind for me. Some interfaces may have fewer or more considerations as each is different. And some of these considerations might be in opposition to others depending on the interface. It���s critical that we consider the implications of our design decisions by weighing them against one another before we make any sort of decision about how to progress. Otherwise we open ourselves up to potential problems and the cost of changing things goes up the further into a project we are:

[image error]
The cost of changing your mind goes up the further into any project you are. Just ask any contractor you hire to work on your house.

As a project manager, I���m sure Josh understands this reality.

As to the ���morally problematic��� bit, I���ll refer back to my earlier discussion of business considerations. Sure, morality can certainly be part of it, but I���d argue that it���s unwise to make assumptions about your users regardless. It���s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all of or users are like us (or like the personas we come up with). My employer, Microsoft, makes a great case for why we should avoid doing this in their Inclusive Design materials:

When we design only for others like us, we exclude everyone who is not like us.

If you���re in business, it doesn���t pay to exclude potential customers (or alienate current ones).

Erecting unnecessary barriers

Statement
���Everyone deserves access to the sum of all human knowledge.��� ��� Nick Pettit���[The web is] built with a set of principles that ��� much like the principles underlying the internet itself ��� are founded on ideas of universality and accessibility. ���Universal access��� is a pretty good rallying cry for the web.��� ��� Jeremy Keith���The minute we start giving the middle finger to these other platforms, devices and browsers is the minute where the concept of The Web starts to erode. Because now it���s not about universal access to information, knowledge and interactivity. It���s about catering to the best of breed and leaving everyone else in the cold.��� ��� Brad Frost

Unstated assumptions:

What���s on the web comprises the sum of human knowledge.Progressive enhancement is fundamentally about universal access to this sum of human knowledge.It is always immoral if something on the web isn���t available to everyone.

I don���t think anyone quoted here would argue that the Web (taken in its entirety) is ���the sum of all human knowledge������Nick, I imagine, was using that phrase somewhat hyperbolically. But there is a lot of information on the Web folks should have access too, whether from a business standpoint or a legal one. What Nick, Jeremy, and Brad are really highlighting here is that we often make somewhat arbitrary design & development decisions that can block access to useful or necessary information and interactions.

In my talk Designing with Empathy (slides), I discussed ���mystery meat��� navigation. I can���t imagine any designer sets out to make their site difficult to navigate, but we are influenced by what we see (and are inspired by) on the web. Some folks took inspiration from web-based art projects like this Toyota microsite:

[image error]
[On Toyota���s Mind](http://www.northkingdom.com/cases/i-h...) is a classic example of mystery meat navigation. It���s a Flash site and you can navigate when you happen to mouse over "hotspots" in the design. I���m pointing to one with a big red arrow here.

Though probably not directly influenced by On Toyota���s Mind, Yeshiva of Flatbush was certainly influenced by the concept of ���experiential��� (which is a polite way of saying ���mystery meat���) navigation.

[image error]
[Yeshiva of Flatbush](https://www.flatbush.org/) uses giant circles for their navigation. Intuitive, right?

That���s a design/UX example, but development is no different. How many Single Page Apps have you see out there that really didn���t need to be built that way? Dozens? We often put the cart before the horse and decide to build a site using a particular stack or framework without even considering the type of content we���re dealing with or whether that decision is in the best interest of the project or its end users. That goes directly back to Tim���s earlier point.

Progressive enhancement recognizes that experience is a continuum and we all have different needs when accessing the Web. Some are permanent: Low vision or blindness. Some are temporary: Imprecise mousing due to injury. Others are purely situational: Glare when your users are outside on a mobile device or have turned their screen brightness down to conserve battery. When we make our design and development decisions in the service of the project and the users who will access it, everyone wins.

Real answers to real questions

In the next section, Josh tries to say we only discuss progressive enhancement as a moral imperative. Clearly I don���t (and would go further to say no one else who was quoted does either). He argues that ours is ���a philosophical argument, not a practical approach to web development���. I call bullshit. As I���ve just discussed in the previous sections, progressive enhancement is a practical, fiscally-responsible, developmentally robust philosophical approach to building for the Web.

But let���s look at some of the questions he says we don���t answer:

���Wait, how often do people turn off JavaScript?���

Folks turning off JavaScript isn���t really the issue. It used to be, but that was years ago. I discussed the misconception that this is still a concern a few weeks ago. The real issue is whether ot not JavaScript is available. Obviously your project may vary, but the UK government pegged their non-JavaScript usage at 1.1%. The more interesting bit, however, was that only 0.2% of their users fell into the ���Javascript off or no JavaScript support��� camp. 0.9% of their users should have gotten the JavaScript-based enhancement on offer, but didn���t. The potential reasons are myriad. JavaScript is great, but you can���t assume it���ll be available.

���I���m not trying to be mean, but I don���t think people in Sudan are going to buy my product.���

This isn���t really a question, but it is the kinda thing I hear every now and then. An even more aggressive and ill-informed version I got was ���I sell TVs; blind people don���t watch TV���. As a practical person, I���m willing to admit that your organization probably knows its market pretty well. If your products aren���t available in certain regions, it���s probably not worth your while to cater to folks in that region. But here���s some additional food for thought:

When you remove barriers to access for one group, you create opportunities for others. A perfect example of this is the curb cut. Curb cuts were originally created to facilitate folks in wheelchairs getting across the road. In creating curb cuts, we���ve also enabled kids to ride bicycles more safely on the sidewalk, delivery personnel to more easily move large numbers of boxes from their trucks into buildings, and parents to more easily cross streets with a stroller. Small considerations for one group pay dividends to more. What rational business doesn���t want to enable more folks to become customers?
Geography isn���t everything. I���m not as familiar with specific design considerations for Sudanese users, but since about 97% of Sudanese people are Muslim, let���s tuck into that. Ignoring translations and right-to-left text, let���s just focus on cultural sensitivity. For instance, a photo of a muscular, shirtless guy is relatively acceptable in much of the West, but would be incredibly offensive to a traditional Muslim population. Now your target audience may not be 100% Muslim (nor may your content lend itself to scantily-clad men), but if you are creating sites for mass consumption, knowing this might help you art direct the project better and build something that doesn���t offend potential customers.

Reach is incredibly important for companies and is something the Web enables quite easily. To squander that���whether intentionally or not���would be a shame.

Failures of understanding

Josh spends the next section discussing what he views as failures of the argument for progressive enhancement. He���s of course, still debating it as a purely moral argument, which I think I���ve disproven at this point, but let���s take a look at what he has to say���

The first ���fail��� he casts on progressive enhancement proponents is that we ���are wrong about what���s actually on the Web.��� Josh offers three primary offerings on the Web:

Business and personal software, both of which have exploded in use now that software has eaten the world and is accessed primarily via the webCopyrighted news and entertainment content (text, photos, music, video, video games)Advertising and marketing content

This is the fundamental issue with seeing the Web only through the kens of your own experience. Of course he would list software as the number one thing on the Web���I���m sure he uses Basecamp, Harvest, GitHub, Slack, TeamWork, Google Docs, Office 365, or any of a host of business-related Software as a Service offerings every day. As a beneficiary of fast network speeds, I���m not at all surprised that entertainment is his number two: Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go/Now��� It���s great to be financially-stable and live in the West. And as someone who works at a web agency, of course advertising would be his number three. A lot of the work Viget, and most other agencies for that matter, does is marketing-related; nothing wrong with that. But the Web is so much more than this. Here���s just a fraction of the stuff he���s overlooked:

eCommerce,
Social media,
Banks,
Governments,
Non-profits,
Small businesses,
Educational institutions,
Research institutions,
Religious groups,
Community organizations, and
Forums.

It���s hard to find figures on anything but porn���which incidentally accounts for somewhere between 4% and 35% of the Web, depending on who you ask���but I have to imagine that these categories he���s overlooked probably account for the vast majority of ���pages��� on the Web even if they don���t account for the majority of traffic on it. Of course, as of 2014, the majority of traffic on the Web was bots, so���

The second ���fail��� he identifies is that our ���concepts of universal access and moral imperatives��� make no sense��� in light of ���fail��� number one. He goes on to provide a list of things he seems to think we want even though advocating for progressive enhancement (and even universal access) doesn���t mean advocating for any of these things:

All software and copyrighted news/entertainment content accessed via the web should be free. and Netflix, Spotify, HBO Now, etc. should allow anyone to download original music and video files because some people don���t have JavaScript. I���ve never heard anyone say that��� ever. Advocating a smart development philosophy doesn���t make you anti-copyright or against making money.
Any content that can���t be accessed via old browsers/devices shouldn���t be on the web in the first place. No one made that judgement. We just think it behooves you to increase the potential reach of your products and to have a workable fallback in case the ideal access scenario isn���t available. You know, smart business decisions.
Everything on the web should have built-in translations into every language. This would be an absurd idea given that the number of languages in use on this planet top 6,500. Even if you consider that 2,000 of those have less than 1,000 speakers it���s still absurd. I don���t know anyone who would advocate for translation to every language.1
Honda needs to consider a universal audience for its marketing websites even though (a) its offline advertising is not universal, and (b) only certain people can access or afford the cars being advertised. To you his first point, Honda does actually offline advertising in multiple languages. They even issue press releases mentioning it: ���The newspaper and radio advertisements will appear in Spanish or English to match the primary language of each targeted media outlet.��� As for his second argument��� making assumptions about target audience and who can or cannot afford your product seems pretty friggin��� elitist; it���s also incredibly subjective. For instance, we did a project for a major investment firm where we needed to support Blackberry 4 & 5 even though there were many more popular smartphones on the market. The reason? They had several high-dollar investors who loved their older phones. You can���t make assumptions.
All of the above should also be applied to offline software, books, magazines, newspapers, TV shows, CDs, movies, advertising, etc. Oh, I see, he���s being intentionally ridiculous.

I���m gonna skip the third fail since it presumes morality is the only argument progressive enhancement has and then chastises the progressive enhancement community for not spending time fighting for equitable Internet access and net neutrality and against things like censorship (which, of course, many of us actually do).

In his closing section, Josh talks about progressive enhancement moderates and he quotes Matt Griffin on A List Apart:

One thing that needs to be considered when we���re experimenting ��� is who the audience is for that thing. Will everyone be able to use it? Not if it���s, say, a tool confined to a corporate intranet. Do we then need to worry about sub-3G network users? No, probably not. What about if we���re building on the open web but we���re building a product that is expressly for transferring or manipulating HD video files? Do we need to worry about slow networks then? ��� Context, as usual, is everything.

In other words, it depends, which is what we���ve all been saying all along.

I���ll leave you with these facts:

Progressive enhancement has many benefits, not the least of which are resilience and reach.
You don���t have to like or even use progressive enhancement, but that doesn���t detract from its usefulness.
If you ascribe to progressive enhancement, you may have a project (or several) that aren���t really good candidates for it (e.g., online photo editing software).
JavaScript is a crucial part of the progressive enhancement toolbox.
JavaScript availability is never guaranteed, so it���s important to consider offering fallbacks for critical tasks.
Progressive enhancement is neither moral nor amoral, it���s just a smart way to build for the Web.

Is progressive enhancement necessary to use on every project?

No.

Would users benefit from progressive enhancement if it was followed on more sites than it is now?

Heck yeah.

Is progressive enhancement right for your project?

It depends.

My sincere thanks to Sara Soueidan, Baldur Bjarnasun, Jason Garber, and Tim Kadlec for taking the time give me feedback on this piece._

Of course, last I checked, over 55% of the Web was in English and just shy of 12% of the world speaks English, so��� ↩

Ten Years on Twitter

Ten years ago today:

Signing up for Twitter

— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) November 10, 2006

Wow. It���s hard to believe it���s been that long. User #12,028 (back when they were still sequential).

If memory serves, Jeremy Keith was the first to suggest I join Twitter. Jeremy and I had met for the first time at SXSW in 2005 and became fast friends. That was the same year I met Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Shaun Inman, Leslie Jensen (pre-Inman), Jason Santa Maria, Rob Weychert, Stuart Langridge, Andrew (n��e Andy ���Malarkey���) Clarke, Jon Hicks, Tantek ��elik, Glenda Sims, and so many more amazing (and influential) web designers. We became quite the posse and dutifully packed the mezzanine of the Hampton Inn each and every morning before the conference started and generally pal-ed around throughout the week. Then we all returned to our respective locales and prepared to do it all over again the next year.

As I mentioned, I think Jeremy was the first to suggest I try out the burgeoning service our friends Biz and Ev had come up with. We all knew Ev from Blogger and he & Biz had worked together on Odeo (a podcasting service that was way before its time) too. Together, under the moniker ���Obvious Corp.���, they had just rolled out a new messaging service called ���Twttr��� (because who needs vowels). It later spun out of Obvious Corp. as ���Twitter���.

Twitter filled a very interesting niche for me back in those days, but I didn���t really notice how much until we all returned to SXSW in 2007. When we had regrouped in 2006, we had spent a lot of time catching up on the developments in our lives that had taken place in the intervening year (at least those we hadn���t blogged about). 2007, however, was different.

By the time SXSW rolled around in March of that year, we���d all been actively using Twitter for nearly six months. And because so few people were on Twitter at the time and we all followed each other, it was quite easy to keep up-to-date with what was going on in everyones��� lives. Twitter created this sort of ambient awareness of everything important that was going on with the folks in the group. So when we returned to Austin in March of 2007, we didn���t spend any time catching up on the events of the intervening year because we didn���t need to. We already knew and were able to pick right up as though we hadn���t missed a beat. It was a pretty amazing feeling and played a big part in my falling in love with Twitter.

That love affair continued for years. My relationships with my friends deepened and our collective relationship with Twitter deepened. I don���t think anything illustrates that more than my good friends Stephanie and Greg getting engaged via the service (yes, they were the first):

@stefsull - ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?

— Greg Rewis (@garazi) March 3, 2008

@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm... I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I'll say--I'd be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you...

— Stephanie Rewis (@stefsull) March 3, 2008

In the past decade, Twitter has changed dramatically. Most of us, with the exception of Brian, moved away from tweeting in the third person. Here���s my transition (circa 2012��� I tweeted for nearly 6 years in the third person!):

has decided, after much internal debate & consideration of your thoughts, to abandon 3rd person tweeting style. #3pT will be the transition.

— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) October 17, 2012

You are confused and confounded by this move and wonder why @aarongustafson did it. Perplexed, you scratch your head.

— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) October 17, 2012

When it came down to it, I decided it was about you, my readers, more so than my enjoyment of the mental exercise of writing 3rd person.

— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) October 17, 2012

The truth is that while I love writing and 3rd person was fun, this change will let me play with other authoring styles.

— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) October 17, 2012

Ideas we played with, like Chris��� suggestion that we add tagging to our tweets, ���d��� messages, at-mentions, and Retweets (later, RTs) changed from things we did as a matter of necessity while using the service to integral pieces of ���Twitter the Platform���.

In the past decade, the culture of Twitter has also changed. When we were starting out, there was this great feeling of solidarity, togetherness. Twitter was a huge public commons where we were all friendly and respectful, even when we disagreed. In the intervening years (the last few perhaps even moreso), however, Twitter has become this wedge that seems to be driving our society apart. The decisive, bile-and-hatred fueled posts, rampant bigotry, threats of violence, and gross intolerance has become such a downer that each year I pull back a little more. I don���t browse the public stream anymore; I can���t deal with it. I have reduced the number of people I follow and have become more dependent on lists and tools like Tweetbot and TweetDeck to help me identify the shallows of Twitter I���m interested in wading into. Don���t get me wrong, Twitter still manages to prove its value every now and again. It can absolutely be a force for good, but like so many things that work well in their ideal state, us messy humans have come along and fucked it all up.

In the past decade, Twitter itself has also fundamentally changed. I remember being gobsmacked when I visited the service���s ginormous San Francisco headquarters last year and saw the massive number of people working there. It made me pine for the days when I used to duck out of Adaptive Path���s SoMa office two grab lunch with the 12 (!) people who were running Twitter at the time. Twitter looks all grown up, but to me it still seems like it���s going through a painful adolescence, unsure of what it wants to be. I hope it can find its way, but I���m uncertain if our relationship will survive that.

Ten years in, I am still in love with Twitter, but I���m unsure if that love is for the service it has become or if it���s simply a manifestation of my nostalgia. I guess time will tell.

Jeremy Keith also recently celebrated his first decade on Twitter. You should definitely read his thoughts & recollections too.