Author: admin

For many years I have tried making different types of presentation software. It’s sort of a hobby of mine.

The commercial software that is out there — notably PowerPoint and Keynote — is sort of boring. It gets the job done, but there is no liveness to it, no sense of improvisatory engagement.

What I strive for is a way to go beyond the sense that audiences are seeing a canned presentation. In the visuals there should be a sense of live engagement, which matches the feeling of engagement you can get when somebody is speaking live.

After all, when you go to a live talk, you never quite know what the speaker might say. They could just read from a prepared speech (boring), or they might riff on an idea, or dwell upon a thought that seems to resonate with the audience.

Speakers should be able to capture that sort of electric energy in their visuals, so I try to make presentation tools that are capable of that. And isn’t that better than a stupid slide deck?

I realized a long time ago that effective teaching is not about imparting knowledge. It’s about knowing how to tell a story.

To make sense of that, it’s useful to ask yourself “Why do people like stories?” What is it about fictional people and their problems that we find so endlessly fascinating?

Clearly there is no profit motive in hearing, reading or watching a good story. It usually doesn’t advance our career, or put food on the table. We do it because there is something enormously satisfying in the process of receiving a story well told.

If you want your students to learn, place what you are teaching in the context of a good narrative.
The important thing is for your learners be motivated to ask “And then what happens?”

The rest is all detail.

Some things that are gold also glitter
Some people who wander are lost
The old that is weak may just wither
Tree roots can be killed by the frost

When I was little, our dad would sometimes bring home donuts for dessert. One day I asked him “When you eat a donut, what happens to the hole?”

He thought about it for a moment, and then he told me “The ghosts eat them.”

I really liked this answer. From then on, I felt very good after I ate a donut.

After all, I wasn’t just eating a donut. I was also feeding a ghost.

Today Kamala Harris turns 60. Hopefully she (and the rest of us) will get a nice belated birthday present on November 5 when she beats what’s his name.

Although considering the completely loopy things that guy has been saying recently, it’s becoming increasingly clear that he is no longer her actual opponent. Any month now he may stop being able to form English sentences altogether.

Which means she is actually running against the man who will take his place when he goes off to the cuckoo bin. And that’s what really scares me.

The Republican VP candidate is something far worse than a mere crook. He is a extremist true believer, which is ten times more terrifying.

I find it fascinating the way fantastical fiction seems to come in pairs, like Coke and Pepsi.

Currently there are currently two major fictional SciFi universes in American culture: Star Wars and Star Trek. In addition, there are currently two major fantasy universes in American culture: the universe of Lord of the Rings and the universe of Harry Potter.

Interestingly, the two science fiction universes both originated in the U.S., whereas the two fantasy universes both originated in the U.K. This roughly matches our sense of those two cultures. America speaks to our sense of the future, whereas England speaks to our shared sense of a nostalgic past.

Of course there is now a third fantastical universe, which has taken over popular culture by shamelessly mixing science fiction and fantasy, without regard to any sense of rhyme or reason. I’m speaking, of course, of the Marvel Universe.

Where else could you find a touching love story between a witch and a robot?

Today I was on a flight over the U.S., and I used my phone to see where I was. Google maps did a spectacularly good job of locating me as a little moving blue dot upon the Earth.

It was fascinating to see lakes and other features on the map at the same time that I could see them with my own eyes out of the window of the plane. I was impressed by how fast this country is, and how much of it is covered in farmland.

And I am reminded once again, lest I should ever forget, that this world is very large, and we humans are extremely small.

Maya Angelou famously said “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” That makes me curious about the thought process of the people who intend to vote for the Republican candidate for U.S. president in this election cycle.

Are they intending to vote on the premise that they don’t believe the things he is saying? His claim that he will be a dictator on his very first day in office. His creepy promise, if elected, to persecute anyone who disagrees with him politically. His promise to destroy entire sectors of the U.S. economy by deporting the workers that those American industries depend upon.

Do those voters think that he is just joking every time he opens his mouth? And if they really think that, then why exactly are they planning to vote for him?

I loved watching the Kamala Harris interview on Fox. News anchor Bret Baier kept interrupting her and trying to trip her up.

But she kept running circles around him, just as she ran circles around you know who during the presidential debate. Every time she turned the tables on her interviewer, it reminded me what a great president she will be.

Sometimes I feel hopeful about the future.

At the user interface conference this week, I got into a conversation with a researcher at Meta. He enthusiastically told me about his research there on gaze tracking.

Specifically, his research group is trying to analyze where people are looking to figure out what they are thinking. In my mind I found myself turning that into a Black Mirror episode.

In my episode, a large unnamed corporation is able to figure out all sorts of things about people from where those people are looking. At one point the corporation’s A.I. figures out that two people are secretly having an affair.

The corporation immediately proceeds to use this knowledge to blackmail the unfortunate couple. The plot twist: We find out that this practice is the corporation’s major source of revenue.

Is that too dark?