// Node Based Tool Design
I spent an evening this week back in Max/MSP, patching boxes together on a canvas, watching numbers and audio move from one to the next in something close to real time.
A look at node based tool design: what it actually is, where you’ve probably already met it, the patterns that keep showing up wherever someone builds one of these, and why the same shape might be the best way to work with AI itself.
Also: modular synths, Mark Fell on why he builds his own tools inside Max/MSP, and why a shader node in Blender is doing the same basic trick as a mixing desk.
// Perverse Incentives
Every metric you optimise for is a proxy. The moment you forget that, the proxy becomes the goal.
A bounty on dead cobras, a surgeon’s scorecard, and what happens when a product team optimises for “conversion” without asking what it’s supposed to be standing in for.
Also: Goodhart’s Law, a shed full of snakes, and why Google moved its own head of search out of the job.
// Information Appliances
Every function a device can perform is something your brain has to hold open as a possibility.
Jef Raskin, the Canon Cat, and why a device that only does one thing asks less of you than one that does everything.
Also: a language with only one variable, a phone that used to do one thing at a time, and the iPod again.
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