I want to say something about the pop-ups, which to have been much more discussed than what I wrote. (UX disaster as engagement bait?)
My desire in showing was to make the site feel more “alive” and to make the reader aware that other people had been there. I was trying to build a vibe of website as public space. Clearly this was not an approach that handles hacker news traffic and attitudes very well.
Secondly, I wanted to make readers aware of how much data is visible about them just from visiting a website.
I wanted it to feel like when you land on a drop shipping site that occasionaly tells you “Alice in Norwich just bought a widget. They're selling fast!”. You slowly realise that the data is real, and that the site actually can see where you live, who provides your internet. Etc. It was meant to be creepy.
Anyway, I've removed the feature now. It was clearly causing usability issues for some people, which was not what I intended. I'll think about other, better ways to get the effect that I had hoped for.
Finally, I'll say that it was at least interesting for me to see things like
“Someone else just connected to Johncom. They're in Kansas City, US, 64121 and are connecting with Spectrum”
“Someone else just connected to Johncom. They're in Cape Town, ZA, 8001 and are connecting with airmobile.co.za”
I got to learn about some new places, postcode formats, and ISPs.
I'm curious to read more of your thoughts on podcasting as a medium. I bet my goals & tastes in creating podcasts differ wildly from your goals & tastes in listening to them. And if I can be so bold: why give our show the time of day, but not something more tightly produced (which, perhaps, stands a better chance of offering high signal-to-noise)?
In any event, Jimmy and I appreciated your post. We're thrilled whenever someone digs in to a paper we've covered and finds it meaningful.
I usually find it very hard to remain deeply engaged with a podcast. I'll be focused for a few minutes, then my focus will shift and only later will I realise that I've been passively listening - absorbing it as a form of ambience but not properly engaging with what's being said. I think this is probably true for most listeners, especially because podcasts are often used as a soundtrack for doing some other task.
When we are not fully engaged with audio I think just go along with whatever's being said. We ignore logical leaps, and then pick up the thread later. But we do, I think, remain aware of the presenter's affect towards whatever topic is being discussed.
So a lot of the time I think when we listen to a podcast all we are really taking away is “what the topic was” and a sense of whether that's a thing we should feel positive or negative about. We don't critically engage with what's being said and whether the conclusions being reached are valid.
That's a lot of waffling, but the point that I'm really trying to get to is that podcasts seem to be more a medium for transmitting vibes than for transmitting complex thought.
This would be fine if podcasts were all entertainment, but when a lot of them are about world affairs, or psychology, or whatever, then I think it leads to people listening to podcasts believing they are educating themselves but actually just absorbing memes (in the mgs2 sense) from the presenters.
So mostly I think that podcasts are just a way for people to start believing things without understanding why they believe them. The more “Produced” a podcast is, the worse this effect probably is. And people listen to them ALL THE TIME. There's probably never been a better medium for spreading disinformation. lol
ANYWAY
I really liked your podcast, and it does some things that I think alleviate the issues I have.
* It's complex enough that if I become disengaged I can't pick up the thread, so I end up just pausing / rewinding.
* It's a conversation, and you as hosts don't agree a lot the time. You do some of the work of critical thinking for the listener.
* The editing is very funny.
I originally gave your podcast the time of day because I was considering going to a future of coding meetup in London, and wanted to know what the vibe would be. The meetup sold out while I was listening :)
Sorry for the slow reply — I was ill. I appreciate your thoughts, and they largely capture how I feel about the medium too, though I'd argue that television is definitely the bigger thought-polluting opiate of the masses.
It's funny that you say "transmitting vibes" almost as though that's a bad thing. At least, I think the vibes are necessary, but not sufficient. I also, personally, think that "entertainment" gets short shrift, though nailing down why would take us on a tour through the sort of define art and the point of a game is to be fun, right? morass of culture literacy / criticism, and HN is definitely not the venue for that.
In any event, thank you for the blog post. It made for some spirited opening banter on our latest bonus episode. And hopefully you'll make it out to the next meetup. I don't live anywhere near London sadly, but I've seen the videos and some of the demos people show are delightful. I need scissors, 61.
I want to say something about the pop-ups, which to have been much more discussed than what I wrote. (UX disaster as engagement bait?)
My desire in showing was to make the site feel more “alive” and to make the reader aware that other people had been there. I was trying to build a vibe of website as public space. Clearly this was not an approach that handles hacker news traffic and attitudes very well.
Secondly, I wanted to make readers aware of how much data is visible about them just from visiting a website.
I wanted it to feel like when you land on a drop shipping site that occasionaly tells you “Alice in Norwich just bought a widget. They're selling fast!”. You slowly realise that the data is real, and that the site actually can see where you live, who provides your internet. Etc. It was meant to be creepy.
Anyway, I've removed the feature now. It was clearly causing usability issues for some people, which was not what I intended. I'll think about other, better ways to get the effect that I had hoped for.
Finally, I'll say that it was at least interesting for me to see things like
“Someone else just connected to Johncom. They're in Kansas City, US, 64121 and are connecting with Spectrum”
“Someone else just connected to Johncom. They're in Cape Town, ZA, 8001 and are connecting with airmobile.co.za”
I got to learn about some new places, postcode formats, and ISPs.