MargaretC

If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:

• I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people

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So, Apple decided to reduce the danger of misuse or error. They have turned Siri into a Copilot. You see these sorts of Copilots appearing in many products - very narrow AI systems designed to help with specific tasks. In doing so, they hide the weirder, riskier, and more powerful aspects of Large Language Models.

Psychedelic therapies seem to be changing this

And finally, to create more meaningful everyday gatherings, create a temporary alternative world through the use of pop-up rules.

I wrote a Python script a few weeks ago to get an AI agent to play a coach and another AI agent to play a coachee. The way they bounced off one another was a great insight on what refinements would enable AI to facilitate more resonant, higher fidelity coaching as opposed to a conversation driven by relevance and people's preferences.

We don't necessarily need to constantly interact with people “around” us on the web. The sensation of being in the quiet companionship of someone else, like reading next to them in a cafe, is what we're missing. The sense of ambiently sharing space – of being co-present – while engaged in other activities is a staple of shared public spaces that

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I find that it’s in this search for aesthetic satisfaction that so many of the best lessons are found. I’m not talking about ornamentation or bells and whistles. I’m taking about the beauty of the four Cs: Clarity, cohesion, consistency, and conciseness. If you have the eye, you’ll recognize them easily (even if getting there isn’t quite so easy).

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