March 2017

Designing Systems, Part 3: Components and Composition

In the final part of my three-part essay based on the talk I gave at Smashing Conference, I look at how we might build components and consider their wider composition.

What should you think about when using Facebook?

Vicki Boykis:

Facebook started as a way for college students to connect with each other, and has eventually gotten to the point where it’s changing people’s behavior, tracking their usage, and possibly aggregating information for the government.

The problem is that each person, whether he or she uses Facebook or not, is implicated in its system of tracking, relationship tagging, and shadow profiling. But this is particularly true if you are an active Facebook user.

So the most important thing to is to be aware that this is going on and give Facebook as little data as possible.

An alarming – but unsurprising – analysis of the data Facebook collects and who has access to it.

Paradise Lost

I had braced myself for its eventual fate, but seeing footage of Birmingham Central Library being demolished still brought a tear to my eye.