TITLE: Programming Magic and Business Skeuomorphism AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: May 26, 2013 9:45 AM DESC: ----- BODY: Designer Craig Mod offers Marco Arment's The Magazine as an exemplar of Subcompact Publishing in the digital age: "No cruft, all substance. A shadow on the wall."; a minimal disruptor that capitalizes on the digital medium without tying itself down with the strictures of twentieth-century hardcopy technology. After detailing the advantages of Arment's approach, Mod points out the primary disadvantage: you have to be able to write an iOS application. Which leads to this gem
The fact that Marco -- a programmer -- launched one of the most 'digitally indigenous' contemporary tablet publications is indicative of two things:
  1. Programmers are today's magicians. In many industries this is obvious, but it's now becoming more obvious in publishing. Marco was able to make The Magazine happen quickly because he saw that Newsstand was underutilized and understood its capabilities. He knew this because he's a programmer. Newsstand wasn't announced at a publishing conference. It was announced at the WWDC.
  2. The publishing ecosystem is now primed for complete disruption.
If you are a non-programmer with ideas, don't think I just need a programmer; instead think, I need a technical co-founder. A lot of people think of programming as Other, as a separate world from what they do. Entrepreneurs such as Arment, and armies of young kids writing video games and apps for their friends, know instead that it is a tool they can use to explore their interests. Mod offers an a nice analogy from the design world to explain why entrenched industry leaders and even prospective entrepreneurs tend to fall into the trap of mimicking old technology in their new technologies: business skeuomorphism. For example, designers "bring the mechanical camera shutter sound to digital cameras because it feels good" to users. In a similar way, a business can transfer a decision made under the constraints of one medium or market into a new medium or market in which the constraints no longer apply. Under new constraints, and with new opportunities, the decision is no longer a good one, let alone necessary or optimal. As usual, I am thinking about how these ideas relate to the disruption of university education. In universities, as in the publishing industry, business skeuomorphism is rampant. What is the equivalent of the Honda N360 in education? Is it Udacity or Coursera? Enstitute? Or something simpler? -----