"Prediction is very hard, especially of the future," said Yogi Berra. But it is just as hard to judge the past, to evaluate whether you got a prediction "right" or not. Our notions of what we see -- even in the present -- are often vague, imprecise, and certainly incomplete. And that's for something…

I frequently find myself in a state of simultaneous dismay and delightful admiration about the end product of designers. Let me explain. This state can be described by contrasting the way a designer and an engineer would solve the same problem. Designers evoke great delight in their work. Engineers…

The first thing Kiki Ostrenga saw as she ran out the front door of her family's white ranch house were the neon-green words spray-painted across the front path: "Regal Slut." She stopped short. Maybe this is just a dream, she thought. The 14-year-old took a few fearful steps forward. She gasped when…

David Simon would be happy to find out that The Wire was hyperbolic and ridiculous, and that the “American Century” is still to come. But he's not betting on it. An excerpt from Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, forthcoming from The New Press. Photograph by Robin Holland Watching…

It was a burglary gone awry. That’s how it looked, at least, to the Los Angeles police detectives who arrived at a gated condo complex in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on the evening of February 24, 1986. The body of a 29-year-old nurse and three-month newlywed, Sherri Rasmussen, had been…

The names of all victims and their relatives have been changed. Quotes from Dennis Paris, Gwen, and Alicia are taken from court testimony. “He called me a stupid bitch … a worthless piece of shit.… I had to tell people I fell off stage because I had so many bruises on my ribs face and legs.… I have…

The elderly black woman sits on her couch and rummages through a cardboard box until she finds the newspaper article—raggedy and faded like the town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where her daughter Melody spent her final years. The headline reads, police seek more clues in murder. "That's what…

Plenty of things worth writing about Kevin Kelly’s post on “Techno Life Skills.” Kelly’s point of departure is that learning how to master any specific technology is less important than learning how to adapt to, use, and understand any technology that emerges (or that meets your newly emergent…

Thu 28 Apr 2011 For as long as I can remember, designers working in digital media have wanted the ability to lay out text in columns — first on the Web, now within multitouch apps. I’ve flirted with it myself, back when when it was relatively difficult to pull off, but in recent years CSS3 has made…

Via this article I would like to give you the big picture introduction to the theory behind social interaction design. Many of my articles on this topic are anchored in social theory but don’t make explicit reference to it, so I thought an overview might be in order. I view social interaction design…

Far from Chicago: Nazi sympathizer Herbert Haupt (center) and his friend Wolfgang Wergin (left) travel by freighter from Japan to France in 1941. Under a clear night sky on June 17, 1942, the German submarine U-584 surfaced just off a sandy Florida beach 30 or so miles south of Jacksonville. Four…

An Event Apart: All Our Yesterdays May 3, 2011by Luke Wroblewski In his All Our Yesterdays presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jeremy Keith outlined the problem of digital preservation on the Web and provided some strategies for taking a long term view of our Web pages. Here are my…

The Alucia and a Remus 6000, an unmanned reconnaissance submarine, at the last-known position of Flight 447. The sub can navigate rugged terrain miles beneath the ocean's surface and bring back thousands of photographs of underwater wrecks. Late on the morning of April 3, the expedition ship Alucia…

Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy model and star of such sci-fi fare as Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman and Attack Of The Leeches, died at the age of 82, but it wasn’t until last week—a year later—that anyone learned that she was dead. In a scene straight out of the sort of B-movie horrors she starred…

Demand and supply certainly matter. But there's another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed. It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to…

One man's effort to rebuild his life—one word at at time—after tragedy strikes Todd Stansfield is awake, just barely. A sedative enters his bloodstream through a needle that’s stuck into one of his torn-up arms. His joints ache. His chest is a road map of stitches from the surgeries he underwent…

On the western edge of Frozen Head State Park, just before dawn, a man in a rust brown trench coat blows a giant conch shell. Runners stir in their tents. They fill their water pouches. They tape their blisters. They eat thousand-calorie breakfasts: Pop-Tarts and candy bars and geriatric energy…

Today we continue an occasional series of guest spots by Readability friends and neighbors. We believe the new Readability, alongside efforts elsewhere aimed at innovating the reading experience, is part of a broader conversation: the possibilities of fresh thinking around digital content,…

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What is Evan Williams doing? I ask myself this as I consume a second cup of strong coffee in a quiet San Francisco café. It is early in the morning on the first workday of the new year, and Williams is apparently blowing me off. For the past two weeks he has ignored my e-mails, phone calls, and text…

Last night, after ten years of being together and coming on eight years of marriage, Nurri asked me to make explicit my definition of power, as the topic had been coming up quite a bit in our recent conversations. I thought it was a great question, especially as the subject is going to crop up again…

Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He has also taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at San Diego State University, and at Duke…

[ chapter one ] Have We Got a Story for You It all started on August 24, 2010, when I received a call from a Los Angeles–based publicist representing Butler and Associates Private Investigations, Inc. The pitch went like this: Butler’s business was a great story for Diablo. Not only did his firm…

In the tropics one must before everything keep calm. – Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness It was the middle of the day in the steamy Philippine jungle and the sun was merciless. Director Francis Ford Coppola, dressed in rumpled white Mao pajamas, was slowly making his way upriver in a motor launch.…

Fifty years ago, one of the most spectacular trials of the 20th century began in Jerusalem: The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann. The proceedings against the former SS Obersturmbahnführer, who organized the deportations of millions of Jews to Nazi extermination camps, brought the Holocaust to the…

Fifty years ago, one of the most spectacular trials of the 20th century began in Jerusalem: The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann. The proceedings against the former SS Obersturmbahnführer, who organized the deportations of millions of Jews to Nazi extermination camps, brought the Holocaust to the…

I've always kept hierarchy to a minimum. Then an employee said, "Promote me," and I was forced to reevaluate my organizational structure. Something strange happened at work a couple of months ago: We parted ways with an employee. That doesn't happen too often at 37signals, the Chicago software…

G: In your video “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” you say social media is going to force us to rethink big ideas like government and identity. Are we getting closer to understanding how they’ll be rethought? MW: Oh boy. This is really a profoundly difficult question. I think what comes across in…

Looking for more? My book The Elements of User Experience puts information architecture and interaction design in context for beginners and experts alike. You can now order the book from Amazon.com. Looking for more? My book The Elements of User Experience puts information architecture and…