When I was doing mobile app design before, people would generally criticize my work saying that it was too unorthodox, that how to use these interfaces wasn’t clear and that I should imitate what has already been done. Strangely, they also said most of the time that it was beautiful nevertheless, so I never really understood what was the real problem behind all of this : if it’s beautiful, then where is the problem ? Shouldn’t beautiful appliances be the only thing that matter ? Or should app design always be ugly ? Should art always respect the rules (of any kind) ?
It made me think about a niche internet thinker who, while intelligent and productive, didn’t get the success he deserved compared to peers. Incidentally, it seems that here too, people didn’t criticize him about the quality of its work, sometimes they even believed him more than the other more orthodox thinkers. The only problem is that when he thinks, he refuses to slow down, or trying to fit into the usual mental schemes. He keeps going the farthest possible, and that’s when it all fails : the farthest possible means it won’t fit the current mental schemes people have, and most people don’t have the will (or even the ability !) to mentally compute a whole new perspective at will, at every point of the day. People, I mean « most » people, generally will just avoid any discourse(whether textual material or something else) when it’s engineered in a whole new way.
And that’s after all the main cause of his lack of major success : the lack of accessibility of his intellectual production. And I think I suffer the same lack, as is any culture, be it literary, artistic or even scientific sometimes, generally needs first to be rendered accessible to the mainstream people, if you want to reach the mainstream people. That’s why I predict this blog will never be successful, because it will never be accessible.
It’s just that I don’t want to compromise. I could make more classical designs and people would appreciate it more, and my apps would work more effectively. The apps would also be easier to use, and that would extend their reach. But I don’t want to « reach » anything, I just want to express myself in the most authentic way, I want to diffuse aestheticism anywhere I can, without having to please any one, either whole communities or singular people. This is my opinion on what is the purpose of life, of my life and there are enough common people in the world, to think that one more of them would not be of any value to anyone.
Because you see, the problem is that accessibilization has the same problem as making popular science : You always lose a part of the finesse, the subtleties of the intricate ideas implied and treated in the source material. When I read mainstream media about technological matters, like for example computer hacking, I’m always disappointed by the vagueness(sometimes there are even errors) of the articles. As a result I have to go to Ars Technica, which work hard to present technical and precise information about the matter. But now the problem is inverted, as I see in the comments posted on Ars, there seems to be only very knowledgable people there, computer scientists; because mainstream people are just not able to understand the precise technical language, the concepts referenced in the piece to give a mental representation of the whole situation to readers.
As a final opinion, I will just say « fuck that », people read what they want, and/or what they can, but you will never get a media channel intended for everyone on the planet. And while not being accessible, there are so much current information you can only get on Ars Technica nowadays and nowhere else, as a precise example, when there is a new virus infecting computers running on windows, mainstream media will tell you « there is a virus », but never tell you how the virus could breached into windows OS defenses, why can it breach them now and not before or in which location of the computer’s memory exactly is the virus residing in order to remain hidden.
And even if accessibility is required to get major success, an inaccessible outlet can still enjoy a niche audience, the niche audience being unable to find the same type of production on a mainstream media. And that very niche audience would tend to have higher resources, so they might be able to support you more.
It’s all a matter of choice in the end, and I chose already.