My head is full of songs, my fingers spilling letters, my eyes lost in landscapes →
Latest Writing
Twenty-Five
It’s Sunday morning. I’ve slept in a bit, which is nice given the restless nights that have burdened me recently. I reach over and tap my phone to check for any notifications.
Jaredigital.com turns 25.
It’s a reminder I don’t recall creating, but I imagine was made as a prompt to write something celebratory about this little piece of the internet that I’ve (somewhat) lovingly maintained for such a long stretch of time. Despite the notification’s assumed intention, my first emotion is surprising pang of melancholy.
I thought “jaredigital” was a pretty clever domain name. (It’s me, but the digital version! Eh? Get it? Also, my .com name was taken.) I’ve thought about changing to something else for many years, but as Web 1.0 as it is, it’s still fitting. I’ve done so much growing here. This website has lived through many of the accomplishments and milestones of my adult life. I’ve spent so much time using it to develop professional skills, share what’s important to me, and figure out what I think and believe. From the truly stupid things I’ve written to the most (allegedly) incisive: that’s all me. Is it really that weird, then, to say that it feels like a part of me?
Featured Work
Roxo Delivery Bot Touchscreen App
DEKA is a research and development company that has been working with FedEx to create Roxo, an autonomous delivery robot. Build atop DEKA’s iBot wheelchair base, Roxo will be able to easily navigate urban terrain like sidewalks, curbs, and even stairs.
Roxo has a 6-inch touchscreen for use by both employees who will prepare Roxo to make a delivery and ordinary folks who will be receiving deliveries. Users will either type a PIN code or scan a QR code to securely open Roxo’s doors. DEKA’s strength lies in its talented hardware development teams, so in order to produce a user-friendly proof of concept touchscreen application for FedEx to use in its initial delivery tests, they reached out to my employer.
Over the course of 3 months, I worked with DEKA’s Roxo team to produce an optimal user experience for both user types. This project was really fun and presented challenges that I hadn’t come across before. For example, Roxo will be used in a variety of lighting environments, from dim, indoor fluorescent lights to full-on sunshine, necessitating some branching of the FedEx design system to increase the size and contrast of text and buttons.
Latest Links
Against the protection of stocking frames.
Ethan Marcotte: “[AI's] failure can’t be separated from the staggering social, cultural, and ecological costs associated with simply using these services: the environmental harms baked into these platforms; the violent disregard for copyright that brought them into being; the real-world deaths they’ve potentially caused; the workforce of underpaid and traumatized contractors that are quite literally building these platforms; and many, many more.”
Rob Weychert v7
Rob has cut the ribbon on his latest site design and it's supes impressive, y'all. Not only does it look great, but it pulls together an impressive raft of source material into one place, achieving that highly-sought-after all-in-one timeline. Blog posts? Naturally. Movies watched? Okay! Music listened/purchased? Oh hell yes.
I Am An AI Hater
Anthony Moser: “But I am more than a critic: I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument, because people have already done that. If you’re pushing slop or eating it, you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider.”
Unbreaking
“In our work at Unbreaking, we’ll help orient and ground our communities in clear and rigorously cited explanations of what’s happening to our government and why it matters. To that end, we’re building a set of pages that will serve as backgrounders for the issues we cover. Each page is written by and for ordinary people, and conveys essential context, a sense of what’s happened so far, and what countermoves are in play.”
Enough
Jonathan Snook: “If I have already achieved everything I’m going to achieve in my life, I am satisfied.” Same, man.
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