I would also propose taking it in the direction of generating synthesizer parameters for a popular VST or Hardware synth instrument. As a musician, it would be very nice to be able to program a synthesizer through plain text as a starting point.
I like Future of Coding. The show combines interviews with paper reads. One of my favorite interviews was with Miller Puckette who created Pure Data and the original version of the Max/MSP software.
I also enjoy the Tech Won't Save Us Podcast. This podcast takes a much needed critical take of tech and SV culture. I feel like this is what tech journalism should be as opposed to the usual cheer leading we usually see.
I think that the current minimal aesthetic really started in the early 00's with Apple's iPod. That design was striking at the time and was the antithesis to 90's grunge aesthetic. I was also a big fan of minimal techno back then and I almost felt like Apple was making nods to that lifestyle. We were certainly using their computers to produce it!
Now minimalism is old hat. I suspect that Gen Z will make some minor statements against it. But the big disruption won't come for another generation.
I recently read Generations by Neil Howe and William Strauss. In the book they make the case that their are 4 archetypes to a generation cycle - Idealist (boomer), Reactive (gen x), Civic (millennial) and Adaptive (gen z). Idealists and Civics are the dominant generations. While Reactive and Adaptive are the less so (one reacts against and the other codifies).
We will soon repeat the cycle sometime in the 2030's. The generation following gen z will be an idealist generation and will disrupt the current "blanding" trends we are living with. Think about the last time this happened. In the 1950s the silent generation (the last cycle's adaptive generation) was coming of age in an extremely conformist era created by the GI Generation (civics). Then the boomers came to age and the 1960s happened.
It depends on what is specifically meant by current minimal aesthetic. At least in architecture, minimalist modernism we can clearly point to Aldof Loo's Ornement and Crime(1908)[1]. It includes gems such as
> The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from utilitarian objects.
> Ornament does not heighten my joy in life or the joy in life of any cultivated person.
and
> Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.
There was not a history of minimal aesthetic before this era.
I'm not sure how this fits into any generational cycle. I'm not too keen on generational reductionism.
Interesting theory. I’ve read speculation that we may get an austere, conservative (perhaps pious) generation this century, based on cases of declining empire like Rome and Sweden. There are counter-examples as well.
> think that the current minimal aesthetic really started in the early 00's with Apple's iPod. That design was striking at the time and was the antithesis to 90's grunge aesthetic.
Unix users had flat designs on Fluxbox/Blackbox and lot of themes.
This! I am fortunate enough to belong to a small team which has mostly adopted Basecamp's "shape up" method and it has been a breath of fresh air.
I think the biggest game changer is the notion of using the "appetite" (number of weeks per cycle) to drive the design of the solution. This is opposed to the usual approach of coming up with a solution and then estimating the points/time it will take to do each part of the project. SE's are bad estimators and the product manager rarely uses time as a design constraint. This is why most projects run past their deadlines IMO.
A digital-only publication cannot survive without playing the same content strategy games as all the other publications out there.
A new BYTE would quickly start diluting its value by offering a podcast, YT channel, IG/Snap Stories, affiliate links and a website slathered with Adsense ads. You'll wonder why they bothered rebooting it in the first place.
No one can resist adsense. "Yeah let's just skip out on that $50k a month, our customers don't want to see all those ads." The incintive, like free money for corporate stock buybacks, is just irresistible.
A printed publication, perhaps with audio supplement (podcast type thing), would not be a venue. And at the same time, may well be super compelling, given it has an industry voice and perspective similar to what BYTE had.
MIT Technology Review is subscription-based and they have podcasts and YT channels. You could run expensive ads in print mags like Scientific American or Harvard Business Review, but you'll reach a far bigger audience online.
This will be true even if the subscription fee was hundreds of dollars per year. Podcasts and short videos are effectively low-cost infomercials for your product. Their purpose is not to make revenue by reading out intermittent ads, but attract an audience that might subscribe.
I still get magazines...mostly for the building trade. Fuck digital. There is something about print that makes people get their shit together and produce quality content. You can't just wing it with some fluffy clickbait and Google ad-sense.
