From the lost drawer: “La Lettura” magazine

March 8, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Et Cetera

Searching among my papers and folders, I found a box full of printed materials from the 1930s and 1940s that belonged to my grandfather (and, gem among the gems, a couple of pages from a 1915 newspaper). One of the best preserved items is the February 1944 issue of La Lettura, an illustrated magazine published by the Corriere Della Sera from 1901 until 1952.

From the Italian Wikipedia entry (translation is mine):

In the early years of the century the magazine, following the principles of the positivist philosophy, aimed to be a magazine featuring comprehensive scientific information, thanks to the collaboration of distinguished academics and scholars. Later, under the direction of Renato Simoni (since 1906) and Mario Ferrigni (since 1923), the magazine became more journalistic and commercial in style, but always within the limits of decorum and keeping a decent cultural standard. One notable scoop was the publication of the photographs of the Battle of Liaoyang (Russo-Japanese War, 1904) taken by Luigi Barzini, Sr. This was the first photographic documentation ever of a battlefield, and copies of the magazine sold out in a few hours. Another scoop was the publication of the first Italian radio programme, the radio drama L’Anello di Teodosio (“The Ring of Theodosius”).

Illustration was a key strength of the magazine: published articles were always accompanied by photographs, and stories and serials by drawings; from 1906 onwards the cover, too, was illustrated in colour by the most famous illustrators of the time: from Enrico Sacchetti to the eminent Marcello Dudovich, from the fantastic style of Umberto Brunelleschi to the caricatural style of Sergio Tofano.

The issue I’ve unearthed is no different. First of all, I really love the cover, which I find surprisingly minimalistic and rather tasteful in the typeface department:

La lettura 1944

And here’s the back cover, with a lovely illustrated ad for a Italian liquor:

La Lettura 1944 back

(Translation: on the top right corner, “Let’s make up”. The tag line on the bottom reads “Cures the ache for foreign liquors”).

Other nice illustrations can be found inside, especially the following three, drawn by Carlo Della Zorza for the story Domanda di Matrimonio (“Marriage Proposal”) written by Milli Dandolo.

DDM illustr 1

 

DDM illustr 2

 

DDM illustr 3

 

That’s it for now. There’s more of this kind of stuff, of course, but the scanning process is slow, mostly due to the fragility of the materials. I also found lots of war-themed postcards my grandfather sent to my grandmother from the front in 1943–44, which I intend to scan and publish here at a later date.

Life after Instagram

March 6, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

My last ‘real’ photo uploaded to Instagram is this one, dated December 13, 2012. As I wrote here a few days later (in Briefly, on Instagram), I didn’t like how the company handled the whole situation surrounding the change of its Terms of Service, I rapidly got tired of Instagram’s “We’re changing the TOS / Okay, no we won’t” dance, and I was still bitter for the Facebook acquisition. So I stopped being an active user, like I said I would.

At the time it was, I confess, an uneasy decision. I liked using the service. I liked the occasional interaction with other users and the familiar faces. I liked the idea of using Instagram as a sort of visual diary, catching a certain day’s mood with a few snapshots and the aid of a bunch of filters. At the same time, I didn’t like the direction Instagram was taking with their Terms of Service, and I was not comfortable being part of something that is owned by Facebook — a company I utterly and openly detest. But caving after expressing my annoyance and disagreement would have been hypocritical on my part. I’ll look for alternatives, I told myself reassuringly.

And then something happened. After ten days or so without posting to Instagram, I wasn’t missing the experience.

I’m not saying I wasn’t missing the Instagram experience (using the app, using the service) — but the whole experience of happy snapping while on the go. It all came to me with a snowball effect. I realised that it had become more of an Instagram dependence than a form of expression. I realised how mechanical a habit it had been. I realised the cheapening effect it had on my photography in general. Posting to Instagram had turned into a meaningless daily hunt for the cool ‘Instagram moment’. And many people are okay with that; all of a sudden I realised I wasn’t. 

That’s why I haven’t looked for an alternative since I left Instagram. I have realised I don’t need one. My Flickr and Momentile activity is enough for what I really need to share. And for what I want to share, which is something more selected and meaningful than quick snaps of insignificant things, hastily taken with my iPhone out of habit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the æsthetics of iPhone snapshots. What I realised is that taking these snapshots had become a habit, an act often performed in auto-pilot. Look at this — click. See that? — click. Street scene — click. Nice indoor atmosphere — click. Close-up of everyday object — click. And on and on in their seemingly-infinite variants. Catch the Instagram moment. Etc.

For me the act of photographing, after Instagram, feels ‘detoxed’. It feels, once again, something carried out more purposefully. It feels less serialised, less trivial. I still take snapshots with my iPhone, of course, but since the instant-sharing part is removed, the overall pace is different, each shot tends to be more careful, and the act of ‘taking a snap for the sake of it’ has definitely vanished. 

Needless to say, these observations reflect a very personal experience, and there’s no need to read between the lines. I’m not suggesting you should follow my example and leave Instagram (or other similar photo-sharing social services). I’ve simply realised that what had started as another creative outlet, quickly became just a habit and little more. And habit and creativity are two words that usually don’t go well together in my book.

Stop whining and deal with it

March 1, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Recently, Joe Kissell at TidBITS has written an excellent article about a subject I’ve been meaning to address for a while: email management and the increasingly popular idea that it’s time to ‘fix’ email. Tech writers and bloggers all have, more or less vocally, moaned about how ‘broken’ email is, how frustrating and time-consuming is the management of their inboxes, apparently as flooded by email messages as celebrities are flooded with fan (or hate) mail.

In his article, aptly titled It’s Not Email That’s Broken, It’s You, Kissell begins by writing:

I’m tired of reading about how email is fundamentally flawed and about all the clever new ways to “fix” or “reinvent” it. Email isn’t broken! Email is great. I love email; it’s my favorite way to communicate. Some email apps, servers, and protocols are better than others, but honestly, it would be OK with me if email stayed as is forever. If your relationship with email is unsatisfactory, email isn’t the problem. It’s you.

And I agree: email is my favourite way to communicate, as I wrote in my piece called Email more than a year ago. Kissell nails it completely for me when he writes:

I could give lots more examples, but it’s clear that a great many people are completely overwhelmed by email. That’s a problem, for sure, and it needs to be solved. What bothers me is when people blame the medium. […] Your email problems aren’t the fault of email as a communications system, and they’re probably not even the fault of the tools you’re using. It’s easy to pick on email because it won’t fight back. But the real problem for most people who feel email is out of control is that they haven’t taken responsibility for figuring out why the problem exists for them and how to change their habits to address it.

My very slight divergence with Kissell’s stance — and the main reason I’m adding my article to the debate — happens at this point:

I wouldn’t presume to say, “Why don’t you just grow up and deal with your problem?” as though you’re merely being too lazy to implement some obvious and foolproof fix.

I will venture to make that presumption and say this: if you have problems with email, stop whining and deal with it, possibly with methods that don’t make you a rude moron in the eyes of your correspondents. As I tweeted back in December, all these prominent tech bloggers who keep saying they can’t deal with all the email messages they receive are refusing to accept that it’s part of the game. Yes, since they sometimes stir up some controversial debate, it’s obvious that part of the feedback they receive via email is going to be hate-mail or generally harsh and impolite messages which are certainly not meant to invite a constructive and in-depth exchange. And I fully understand how this kind of spammy emails keep adding to the pile and make things less than ideal to manage. 

But ignoring or deleting messages indiscriminately, in my opinion, is not a solution. And it annoys me how some people flippantly claim to be managing their email this way, because it comes across as rude and thoughtless behaviour. Among those messages they chose to ignore or delete there are polite requests and nice communications. I know this from experience, both as someone who wrote such polite requests and nice, disinterested messages (which remained largely unanswered, of course), and as someone who has been on the receiving end of such kind of emails.

I can’t excuse this rude behaviour because, as I said, handling a generous amount of email feedback is part of the game, where by ‘game’ I mean being a well-known figure in the world of technology commentary. “I want to write whatever the hell I want, I don’t support comments in my blog, and receiving all this feedback via email is incredibly annoying and exhausting, so leave me alone” — is the childish attitude of people still trapped in their adolescence. After all, they put themselves in that position. You don’t want to deal with this kind of feedback? Don’t put contact information on your website. Or write some guidelines in order to place a filter as early as possible in the communication chain: this way, people inclined to write you will know beforehand what’s going to happen and may even decide not to write you. It’s a time-saver for both parties, and you don’t come across as rude as you would by mass ignoring/deleting the emails you receive, whatever their nature. Not to mention that some of this high-profile tech writers live of their blogs/products: the least they could do is deal with people who helped make them successful.

A true Inbox Zero stage has little to do with the number zero

Mat Honan said it well:

Inbox zero is just a construct. It doesn’t matter if you do or don’t have a clean inbox — what matters is that you act on your incoming mail as necessary. Inbox zero is simply an organizational technique to help you accomplish the things you really need to. It is not the end goal; it’s simply a process. Too many people conflate the process of inbox zero with the goal of being more productive.

And too many people take the number zero literally and find themselves engulfed in a state of ’email angst’ of their own creation. Oh god, oh god, the ‘red badge of discourage[ment]’ alerting of those 58 unread messages! Delete this, mark that as read, dismiss, dismiss… until zero is reached. Isn’t this just silly? From experience, what I can say on the matter is that by always ignoring the Inbox Zero kind of email management, I often find myself at the end of the day (or of the weekend) with an Inbox that truly has zero unread messages. To reach that point is all a matter of triage, triage, triage. 

I can’t suggest a method or process that’s valid for everyone: I’ve found out that for me the worst approach is the ‘deal with this later’. The earliest I act when I receive new messages, the better the overall management. Where ‘to act’ most commonly means ‘to assess’, not necessarily ‘to reply’. Instead of having too many email folders, I prefer to have a dozen different email accounts. I use a certain account to sign up for newsletters, another for social networks and related services, another for joining the few mailing lists I follow, etcetera. All the low-traffic accounts and the accounts that are set to receive ‘impersonal email’ (again, newsletters, promotions, shopping suggestions, mailing lists…) are handled by a separate email client (Mailsmith) and I check them every 3–4 days. 99.99% of the spam I receive is efficiently handled by Gmail itself and by the ever-wonderful SpamSieve.

The few accounts set to receive important work-related email, feedback related to what I write here, important personal email, and the like, are handled by Mail.app — my primary email client — and I monitor them much more frequently than the others. (Only these accounts are configured in my iPhone and iPad.) This two-tier approach may seem chaotic and complicated, but it’s rather simple once the wheels start moving. In the end it’s just a matter of setting up an effective filtering system. I devised this approach over a weekend years ago, and it hasn’t changed much since. Sometimes I don’t reply to messages and requests right away, but I eventually get back to people. And if I ignore certain messages, chances are the sender hasn’t followed my guidelines.

What’s important, however, is that I devised this email management system because I care. I care about email as a means of communication. I care about helping people if they write me with a (reasonable) request, I care about feedback and I’m open to suggestions or tips to expand my knowledge or point of view on a variety of subjects. Many times my correspondents have shared useful advice or asked to know more about certain topics, and sometimes that has led to a constructive correspondence which I like to think enriched both parties. Email is not broken, per se — attitudes are.

I don’t want to live with a digital co-pilot

February 22, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Google Glass in traffic

Two days ago, Google published a video on YouTube, called How it feels [through Glass]. At the end of the description for the video, there’s an interesting tag line: Welcome to a world through Glass. Though while Google gives this phrase a decidedly positive connotation, after watching the video I can’t help but think about it negatively.

Some people are excited by this project. Among them Owen Williams; in his brief piece, Wearable technology: the next big thing, he writes:

As with self-driving cars, there will be a period where the market will probably reject it saying that it will “never” happen, but it will. It’s obvious that our lives could be somewhat enhanced by peripheral devices that show us information without needing to pull a slab out of our pockets to catch up.

You know what’s great about smartphones? That they (and the information they provide) can stay in your pocket and out of the way if you want. Pulling them out of your pocket is an active decision on your part. Google Glass apparently aims to become a constant layer between you and the world around you. Wherever you go, there’s that little window in your peripheral vision, and try as I might, I can’t find it pleasant or unobtrusive. I certainly can’t see myself getting used to it. It feels like living with a digital co-pilot that follows you everywhere. I find that exhausting and even a little creepy. 

I very much agree with Filippo Corti’s sentiments when he writes[1]:

But, but… it’s not true that one gets accustomed to everything, and that any technology feels somewhat awkward at first and then we just adopt it without raising a brow. The Google Glass headset is a bit like Bluetooth headsets: for their convenience and evolution they’re undoubtedly better than having to reach for your phone in your jeans’ pocket to answer calls, but despite their being around for years, we’re still not fully accustomed to seeing them in use. [They still feel somewhat weird.] Because they’re handier, sure, but not so much as to justify the intrusion. Because we see them as an exaggeration, an excess.

[…]

Google Glass has a future, but it’s not the future. It’s a product that will surely exist and be commercialised, but I don’t think it’s going to be as popular and widespread as smartphones are. It’s a device that may be useful in specific circumstances — and it will have its share of devoted users — but ultimately excessive in day-to-day life. Google’s video shows a lot of possible use cases for the device (I also think it could be a great augmented-reality game console) but as an everyday device, I just can’t imagine a world ten years from now where it’ll be normal to have a screen glued to the right side of our field of vision. 

Yes, there are some interesting use cases where a hands-free device like Google Glass can indeed be useful. The still from Google’s video I chose to accompany this piece isn’t a random choice: having turn-by-turn map navigation display before your eyes this way is probably less distracting than diverting your gaze to look at the car’s sat-nav system, even momentarily. I also think that Google Glass could be a useful aid for reporters to quickly grab crucial footage in dangerous circumstances where they have to act fast and literally follow the events unfolding before them, and they surely can use a device that’s more inconspicuous than a camera (provided, of course, that the built-in camera has adequate specs for this kind of task).

But as a permanent everyday extension, Google Glass feels too close for comfort for my tastes. Socially, it’s a disaster in the making. Welcome to a world through Glass is like saying “Welcome to a world where everybody carries their personal bubble around and can be even more alone together”. A world through Glass is, in a way, a filtered, mediated world. Where the information is constantly with us, and no matter how unobtrusive the final user interface will be, it’s going to be always there in our face, too tempting not to become an addiction for some. If now you think it’s rude for people to glance at their smartphone when you’re trying to have a conversation with them, imagine when they’ll seem to look in your direction, listening to you, while they’re actually checking something in their tiny Google Glass screen. I would also feel uncomfortable around people wearing such a device, because I would ask myself what they’re doing, I would ask myself whether they’re recording what/who they’re looking at, and why. So it would be interesting to see how the Google Glass project plans to address privacy concerns of such kind. 

And finally, I don’t know you, but I don’t like the idea of Google controlling all that amount of personal information. That feels almost more intrusive than the hardware itself.

 

 

  • 1. The original article is in Italian. I’ve provided the English translation of the relevant excerpt. ↩

 

Selective enthusiasm

February 19, 2013
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

After posting my views on a hypothetical Apple smartwatch (in the form of a link to Harry C. Marks’ article, called Candidly Speaking, an iWatch is a Dumb Idea), I had a brief email exchange with a long-time reader of my blogs. He wrote me to say that, in his opinion, over the years I’ve been losing enthusiasm towards technology; that I’m getting more and more entrenched in a “conservative and jaded attitude” (his words) preventing me to “fully embrace the tech-driven change happening today”. According to him, my position as regards to a possible Apple iWatch is the perfect example. So let me explain a couple of things.

1. More on the ‘iWatch’

Although I think I ‘get’ Apple more than other people, there have been times in the past when my predictions of the company’s next move were incorrect, and on other occasions (see the earlier-than-expected introduction of the iPad 4, for example) I was really taken aback by certain decisions. But it’s okay, because I’ve never presented myself as a self-appointed ‘Apple analyst’. Mine has always been a quiet, mild speculation; I’ve never written ‘This is what Apple’s going to do’ articles with the boldness and certainty displayed by other tech writers. And secondly, with Apple I have always liked to wait and see; I’ve always liked to be surprised, because in the end, as Socrates would say, I know that I know nothing.

So, on the iWatch, I may be completely wrong, but here’s what I think. For Apple to produce one, it has to be something worthwhile. Apple doesn’t strike me as a company willing to waste R&D resources on an accessory that doesn’t sell well and that doesn’t introduce some kind of innovation or out-of-the-box thinking that’s typical of Apple. I reckon the company learnt a lesson after failed products like the iPod Hi-Fi. Therefore, in my opinion we’re going to see an Apple smartwatch or similar wearable device only if it brings a novel, useful approach. It has to be something ordinary people want to buy and strap to their wrist — not just geeks. Geeks have to remember they’re in the minority. I agree, we shouldn’t consider a smartwatch just a fancy digital watch with a few added features. But to be successful, people have to want to wear this thing for many hours in a day, just like a watch. Wearable fitness devices are tolerable because you wear them for specific purposes and for a limited time. A smartwatch, in theory, is a device you have on you all the time, or at least during your waking hours.

The iWatch as an accessory for iPhone/iPad/iPod seems something a bit too redundant to be really useful and become wildly popular. A geek may be fascinated to receive notifications from iOS apps on his/her iWatch, or to see a live weather widget beneath the time and date on the display. For a regular person… eh, it’s a different story. I used to have one of those calculator wristwatches back in the 1980s. At first I was a bit mad at friends and people for basically making fun of it (and me), but after the novelty aspect wore off, I soon understood that it was an ugly and rather impractical device. It sure seemed useful to be able to do calculations ‘on the fly’ wherever and whenever I wanted, but in reality that turned out to happen much more infrequently than anticipated. And when I did use it, I realised how limited and impractical the calculator feature was, making me wish I had taken with me my full-featured scientific calculator. 

To be an interesting device, a smartwatch has to overcome this kind of disappointing experience. As an iPhone/iPad/iPod accessory, what problems does it solve? Can it really be better at notifications, having a smaller screen than any current iOS device and probably a less versatile inteface? What can it do to make people want to get it as a valid iPhone companion? In all the pro-iWatch articles I’ve read, many if not all the features this smartwatch is supposed to have are all features that an iPhone already has or can handle better, offering a more comfortable user experience, and are all features that make an iWatch almost completely redundant or make it a very premium accessory to have. 

As a standalone device, I agree with Sameer Singh’s observations in his piece Can Apple’s iWatch Create a Market Disruption?, especially this:

Of course, the challenges here are far more significant — primarily design & engineering related. At this stage, the battery power backup for an iWatch sized product would be very limited. Even if it was powered by kinetic energy, it may be nearly impossible to support an on-board GSM radio. The iWatch would need access to the internet and standalone applications. A 1.5 inch screen would provide a sub-par experience with apps and browsing, and it may be next to impossible to use the touchscreen for navigation or input. This leaves Siri as the primary input method, which may not be reliable enough at this stage. While I won’t question Apple’s expertise, these are significant challenges for any company.

In conclusion, I think that we’re not going to see an iWatch unless Apple has thought about producing a device with enough innovation in it and that can provide a useful and unique approach, a device that’s worth investing R&D resources on, a device with the potential of being a big commercial hit.

2. On my enthusiasm

Well, the short explanation is in the title of this piece, actually. It’s not that I’ve been losing interest or enthusiasm in technology. What my long-time correspondent calls a “conservative and jaded attitude” is more a reaction to how technology is treated and talked about by the tech press, especially online.

Part of my everyday morning ritual is leafing through Flipboard’s Technology section on the iPad while I have my coffee. And what I notice on an alarmingly frequent basis is that a lot of pieces of tech news exude hype and hyperbole, either for products or technologies that exist, or for products and technologies that may be revealed in the near future. I also notice an unhealthy amount of rumours, gossip, wild speculation passed off as ‘analysis’, lots of editorialising, and so on and so forth. And I also notice a certain attitude among tech-oriented bloggers which I find increasingly annoying and which is the opposite of my selective enthusiasm: a kind of blanket enthusiasm for whatever new application, product, technology or service being introduced. I know, I know, it’s “just passion” for what they do. Enthusiasm is good, it’s a powerful force that drives you to keep doing what you do — in this case, talking about all things tech. 

But from what I can see, a large part of today’s technological buzz is what I call gadgetry and a lot of what I read about it is bathed in self-indulgence and navel-gazing. A lot of people in the tech world look mesmerised by all these digital toys and it seems that all they’re interested in are newer, cooler toys to keep playing with. The next, bigger smartphone. The Apple smartwatch. The next app to synchronise your work. The next service to make your workflow even easier, even more ‘frictionless’ (no matter if it works much like the other app or service you already use and are happy with — look, it has cooler graphics and visuals!). And what I see are people who talk and talk about these things, these little cool digital toys as if they were all that matters. If you try to offer a more critical perspective you’re the luddite, the old-school curmudgeon, you are someone who’s afraid of the new and foolishly resists change in the name of quaint principles and all that.

So yes, my enthusiasm is very selective when it comes to technology. I don’t give a damn about Facebook’s Graph Search. I fail to be really interested or fascinated by Project Google Glass. Wearable technology as it is today doesn’t particularly attract me. The nth cloud service makes me yawn. What really makes me tick is the bigger picture, what I’m really enthusiastic about are game-changing technologies, products, services. Technology that truly impacts and betters people’s lives. Not the newest gadget or toy that does little more than keeping people entertained and often turns out to be little more than a time-waster. (Don’t get me wrong: I recognise the value of all those applications that make life easier by making dull things more entertaining.) 

My enthusiasm is all for new discoveries and technological advances that really make things advance, that really make me feel there’s true progress. I remember some tech-related ‘whoa moments’ in my past: the discovery of Desktop Publishing, laser printers, the first powerful and really portable laptops, PDAs like the Newton and handwriting recognition, optical discs, the Web, the GPS, and then devices like the Kindle, the iPhone and the iPad. 

And I don’t fear the new, nor I resist change. What I resist is accepting new tech-related trends uncritically. What I resist is the It’s new, therefore it’s good dogma. What I resist is diverting my attention from what’s important (work, the task at hand, creativity, etc.) to obsess over the many different tools to use to do the job or to let creativity flow. Again, I reserve my enthusiasm for the kind of technological innovation that truly improves our lives, not for gadgets or other digital toys that end up making us addicted to them and negatively affect our behaviour.