LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #96:

WHY ARE DIGITAL SERVICES SO BROKEN?

“In case you’re not a computer person, I should probably point out that ‘Real Soon Now’ is a technical term meaning ’sometime before the heat-death of the universe, maybe’.”

~ Scott Fahlman

It seems that a lot of things start out with a great, simple, and sometimes even elegant idea. And then it all goes downhill from there. Looks like digital services either become like email, or get so many things going on that it’s hard to tell what they are becoming. Apart from that, we get some great tips on email, check out some vintage computer ads, and fittingly have a very close look at tears.

Does That in Any Kind Look Familiar?

If your website looks like this, I’d like to talk to you.

40 Tips on Email

EMail is actually the communication form I like the most; second only to not communicating at all (check out this article on how to do that): It is asynchronous and gives you time to react, due to its written form it lends itself to well thought-out ideas (you might be able to camouflage stupidity in a well-performed speech, but you cannot write yourself out of a logical pit), it can be archived and referred to later, it can be automatically processed, stored and retrieved at will, in short: it comes as close to a miracle as you can. If done well. Here are 40 tips on how to do exactly that: Do well with email.

How long does it take to actually read the “Terms of Service”?

Aaaaah - legalese. You know - the stuff you agree upon when using something. Let’s say you want to listen to Taylor Swifts new Album while also reading the Terms of Service of Spotify.You’d be well into the ninth song on the album before you were done, missing a solid third of the record. And when it comes to Microsoft’s ToS, you could choose between them and Shakespeares Macbeth - both would take you around 1 hour to read.

The Topography of Tears

The reason why tears are created define their chemical composition. And they look very different, as Rose-Lynn Fisher has documented in her project The Topography of Tears.

These Taught us how to Computer

If you ever wondered why computer nerds in their 40ies are how they are, just check out this gallery of the book they grew up with. If that doesn’t tell you everything, I don’t know what would.

That’s it from this edition of Let’s be Fwends, let’s put on our neck ties, spritz some water in our faces and shout at our computers. It was cool in the 90ies, I’m sure it’s cool today. 👨🏻‍💼

PS: Scott Fahlman is the dad of the smiley :-)

PPS: Do you know how difficult it is nowadays to not have a smiley emoticon turned into a smiley emoji automagically?