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The billionaire’s typewriter

practicaltypography.com

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Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#81

Post by dgbrt »

For the majority of content creators: increased reach is enough of a benefit to relinquish control to the packaging of their content. Look at youtube, soundcloud.

Medium occur to me as the natural evolution of written content publishing, just like soundcloud is to music, youtube to video, etc. It's a platform that gathers everybody's content and streamlines it so it's easy to explore, discover and consume. For the reader, there is real benefit in being able to discover related content not just of the same author (like on traditional "own your blog" website), but of a galaxy of them. It's about time writers get to reach the same broad audience as video and music creators.

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#82

Post by onion2k »

state wrote: post #58

"As a writer, the biggest po­ten­tial waste of your time is not ty­pog­ra­phy chores, but Medium it­self. Be­cause in re­turn for that snazzy de­sign, Medium needs you to re­lin­quish con­trol of how your work gets to readers." Amen. Finally, someone has put this simply. The issue here has nothing to do with type. The author does a pretty good job of pointing out why Medium's pandering to design is clearly B.S. — but…

It's a distraction from the fact that they own you.

No they don't.

They don't own the work you choose to publish through their platform in any way whatsoever. By publishing it there you give them permission to use it[1], but no ownership of it. They have absolutely no claim on you, your future work, your past work, or any benefit you might receive from publishing with them. You can delete a story after you've published it, and you can publish it unlisted so it won't appear in any listings or publications on their site.

If you believe that's the same as owning you then you have a very strange definition of "owning you".

[1] https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e...

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#83

Post by RyanMcGreal »

Detrus wrote: post #64

The original computing vision, the Mother of All Demos, was philosophically against designing text in the ways of the obsolete print medium. The focus was on inventing a new way of writing information altogether. Instead of having paragraphs go one after another as required by print, have maps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map of the argument, wikis etc. If we focused on this more, we might have reached a new…

Sidenote: at the bottom of the motherfuckingwebsite link is a link to a blogging tool called txti:

http://txti.es/

You just type some stuff into the text box, submit the form and you've got a web page:

http://txti.es/4t17s

It's remarkably similar to jottit, a tool built several years ago by the late Aaron Swartz:

http://www.jottit.com/

Exact same thing: you type some text into a text box, submit the form and you've got a web page:

http://www.jottit.com/3bn7r/

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#84

Post by tempodox »

Great article. To me, it explains why Medium is such a perfect fit for a certain kind of marketing material, and not much else beyond that.

After initial novelty wore off, I now decidedly tend to not read articles on Medium. It has become one of the countless sites I wouldn't miss at all.

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#85

Post by kalleboo »

WalterBright wrote: post #75
dredmorbius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they're typically considered gauche, there are typefaces which emulate a broken typewriter. I somewhat like those as well.

Even printed books are uneven. That gives printed books a bit of charm that is lacking in the endlessly perfect digital books. It's like a drum synthesizer, too perfect. If I was designing ebook software, I'd support a rendering that would ever-so-slightly mis-position each letter, and in fact have a dozen incarnations of each letter, all slightly different, and pick one at random each time. I'd also make the backgro…

> If I was designing ebook software, I'd support a rendering that would ever-so-slightly mis-position each letter, and in fact have a dozen incarnations of each letter, all slightly different, and pick one at random each time

Sounds like whatever font renderer Mozilla was using on my university's old Solaris workstations. Whenever you'd select text it'd change again. I don't think it was a design feature though.

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#86

Post by GrinningFool »

onion2k wrote: post #82
state wrote: post #58

"As a writer, the biggest po­ten­tial waste of your time is not ty­pog­ra­phy chores, but Medium it­self. Be­cause in re­turn for that snazzy de­sign, Medium needs you to re­lin­quish con­trol of how your work gets to readers." Amen. Finally, someone has put this simply. The issue here has nothing to do with type. The author does a pretty good job of pointing out why Medium's pandering to design is clearly B.S. — but…

It's a distraction from the fact that they own you. No they don't. They don't own the work you choose to publish through their platform in any way whatsoever. By publishing it there you give them permission to use it[1], but no ownership of it. They have absolutely no claim on you, your future work, your past work, or any benefit you might receive from publishing with them. You can delete a story after you've publish…

I suspect he was thinking of the older version [1] - I know that's the only one I'd even seen until you posted this link. The wording of the original is much more draconian, though [to my non-lawyer mind] it appears to say the same thing now, just much more politely.

[1] https://github.com/Medium/Policy/commit/198049bacef485f21cbb...

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#87

Post by rokhayakebe »

ekianjo wrote: post #76
rokhayakebe wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a distraction from the fact that they own you. 1) Many people do not care to maintain a blog 2) Many people do not plan on writing regularly; maybe once every three months may even be a miracle, in which case a shared platform is preferable. 3) Writing on your own blog is like building your own restaurant in the desert instead of a strip mall, it will take a lot to get people to find it. 4) Sometimes you just wa…

1) So what? Does that mean that Medium is the best choice out there? I fail to see the connection. 2) Some car owners only drive once every few weeks yet still own a car instead of renting one. Don't make simplistic assumptions. There are benefits in ownership even for casual users. 3) Ever heard of Social Media ? Word of Mouth ? If you have good content, you will get linked, re-linked, and bookmarked. 4) See 1. 5) "…

I agree with all 5. My main point is simply that not as many people as you may believe care about owning their content. Truth is it will benefit them more on a shared platform.

I have never used Medium, and most likely never will, but I would love a Medium built inside HN. That, I would use.

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#88

Post by state »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #87
ekianjo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) So what? Does that mean that Medium is the best choice out there? I fail to see the connection. 2) Some car owners only drive once every few weeks yet still own a car instead of renting one. Don't make simplistic assumptions. There are benefits in ownership even for casual users. 3) Ever heard of Social Media ? Word of Mouth ? If you have good content, you will get linked, re-linked, and bookmarked. 4) See 1. 5) "…

I agree with all 5. My main point is simply that not as many people as you may believe care about owning their content. Truth is it will benefit them more on a shared platform. I have never used Medium, and most likely never will, but I would love a Medium built inside HN. That, I would use.

What do you mean exactly by "Medium built inside HN"? Something for long-form writing that's a part of HN? Or a Medium-like service built by people associated with HN?

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#89

Post by jordanlev »

Detrus wrote: post #64

The original computing vision, the Mother of All Demos, was philosophically against designing text in the ways of the obsolete print medium. The focus was on inventing a new way of writing information altogether. Instead of having paragraphs go one after another as required by print, have maps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map of the argument, wikis etc. If we focused on this more, we might have reached a new…

Surely this is a matter of personal taste / opinion -- I actually prefer when different sites have different designs. For example, I don't like RSS readers that put all content into the same format, and prefer ones that just link to the articles so I can read things in the context of the site's design (as the author wants it, not me).

And I think the diamonds next to the hyperlinks on this article is a neat design flourish (because it is still intuitive and usable... although admittedly most other designs that do away with the standard underlined text are a usability loss).

Re: The billionaire’s typewriter

#90

Post by Detrus »

jordanlev wrote: post #89
Detrus wrote: post #64

The original computing vision, the Mother of All Demos, was philosophically against designing text in the ways of the obsolete print medium. The focus was on inventing a new way of writing information altogether. Instead of having paragraphs go one after another as required by print, have maps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map of the argument, wikis etc. If we focused on this more, we might have reached a new…

Surely this is a matter of personal taste / opinion -- I actually prefer when different sites have different designs. For example, I don't like RSS readers that put all content into the same format, and prefer ones that just link to the articles so I can read things in the context of the site's design (as the author wants it, not me). And I think the diamonds next to the hyperlinks on this article is a neat design fl…

It's a matter of philosophical taste. I like to look at fancy typography myself. But there is a time and place for that, which is a separate time from reading something for content.

Unique designs serve a functional purpose, helping you remember where you read something, who authored it. That purpose can be served a different way.

And philosophically, I'm not sure I should care about who wrote it. One author having a prettier template than another adds bias. A set of various authors using the same template can make the mediocre ones appear more trustworthy than mediocre authors using an ugly template.

If I chose the template for everyone, I'd judge them by content faster, since I'd be used to the look and new pretty typography wouldn't distract me.

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