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The Future Is Like Pie #46
Lisa Maria Marquis
September 05, 2024
Gratitude, not for love itself, but for the way it can end
without a house on fire.
This is how I plan to leave next.
Unceremonious as birth in a country overrun
by the ungrateful living. The poem begins with a chain
of well-meaning liars walking one by one
off the earth’s edge. That’s who died
and made me king. Who died and made you.
As you probably know, I recently gained ownership of my book, Everyday Information Architecture, from my defunct publisher, which is: so exciting! Yes, and: so annoying! If I’d wanted to do things like “license fonts” and “manage distribution channels,” I would have gone the self-publishing route in the first place! Instead, I opted for a traditional publisher, so that I could focus on making words good instead of, you know, all the other labor that goes into printing and selling a book.
C’est la vie. Anyway, I (as well as the other forty-odd authors in this boat with me) have spent the summer updating book files to remove all references to my former publisher. That makes it sound a bit like I’m scribbling big ballpoint Xs on yearbook photos, but it’s really a simple legal requirement, and mostly involves revising the copyright page, creating a new cover, etc.
Of course, changing one little thing tends to necessitate changing other, sometimes less little things. For example, links were previously displayed in a shortened format managed by the publisher, so I’m updating that formatting—and while I’m there, I’m also checking to make sure the source links are still active, which (thanks to the ravages of time and billionaires) isn’t always the case. Updating and removing source links makes me wonder if I should be updating the research and replacing older references to Facebook and Pinterest and—you can see how this snowballs.
Which brings me to the links I want to share with you today! There’s an excellent quote in my book, originally tweeted by information architect Sarah L. Barrett in 2017: “Categories are both powerful and fundamentally arbitrary, which is a dangerous combination.” In my search to confirm that the tweet still exists, I realized that she’s continued to write very smart things in the intervening years over on Medium. A la: this post on the fascinating history of Australian railroads as a metaphor for information architecture work:
In the 1850s, Australia needed a railway system. One colony decided to use 4' 8 1/2" track, the other decided to use 5' 3" track. They haggled back and forth, people got angry, I’m sure, but it never got ironed out. […] Australia had computers before they had standardized rail because it is a hard problem to solve. It is a technologically simple problem: Use one gauge of rail. It is an incredibly difficult people problem, just like most IA challenges.
But, funny story: after I read that post—literally an hour or two later—I happened to be scrolling tumblr when a familiar number jumped out at me. 4 feet, 8.5 inches. Didn’t I just see that exact measurement? Lo and behold: the fascinating history of American railroads:
A history lesson for people who think that history doesn’t matter: What’s the big deal about railroad tracks? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, because that’s the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because…
Check out both links for a one-two punch on the history and value of standardization. (Well, I’d click through for that!)
Lightning round
“I prefer a future where everybody has good ideas to one where all the ideas are handed down from one fancy bitch.” [Charlie Jane Anders]
Dan Brown on helping clients understand the trade-offs in design (and thinking out loud about his process!) [LinkedIn]
An illuminating thread on language acquisition and learning goals [Twitter via tumblr]
“A pedestrian cannot live on compliance alone.” [Sean Hayford Oleary]
Throwback read
From issue #16
In honor of Labor Day, here’s Ethan Marcotte’s 2019 essay, “Getting to work,” on the ongoing erosion of workers’ rights, particularly in the tech industry:
I’ll just add that the one thing that’s consistently given me hope over the last year are the ways in which tech workers have begun to organize. From [2018’s] Google walkouts to the GitHub employees protesting their company’s contact with ICE, tech workers are actively speaking up about exploitative working conditions, about unjust behavior by their employers, and about abuses they see in their workplaces. This gives me hope because, well, it feels like a needed counterbalance to the unchecked, unregulated expansion our industry’s seen in the last decade. In short, our industry’s trajectory needs a corrective, and these workers are getting organized to provide it.
Five years later, capitalism continues to dehumanize us all, and the need for unions is still urgent and ascendant. If you’re looking for a starting point in your own workplace, get yourself a copy of You Deserve a Tech Union.
September’s cause
You’ve no doubt heard about recent voter suppression actions in Texas (and other states), particularly the raid on 87-year-old activist Lidia Martinez’s home last month. Donate to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to help support civil rights, education, and voter registration in Hispanic communities.
Register for my workshop
After a summer break, it’s time for another edition of my online workshop, FIX YOUR SITEMAP, this time on Tuesday, September 24, 11 am to 2 pm eastern. All three sessions sold out this past spring, so reserve your spot now! And remember, newsletter subscribers get 15% off with code NEWSLETTER15—I’d love to see you or your colleagues there!