iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 15h

Yessss omg. Blast from the past and a classic. Haven't seen this for 10 years or more, probably. Sadly not as useful once I learned to write code.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 29/09/2026

Wait, why are these visualizations so nostalgic? What did you use for this?

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

Hah! Such a great question. I am being obtuse here, really. The reason "sociotechnical" as a term is helpful is typically because it opens the eyes of optimistic technology-builders to see and realize that their technologies (all technologies) are socially and culturally situated. (continued...)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

And this is why "Turkopticon" is a standout piece to me. It is a perfect example of a system that is explicitly aware of the social and political role it plays, but is also a real, practical, working system that is concretely demonstrative. It shows how it functions and makes real its ideas. (end)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

In other words, I want the folks who recognize that "socio-" and "-technical" cannot be separated start actually building things. Too many papers make policy considerations, write guidelines, or imagine possibilities. I want to see real demonstrations and actual, working technologies. (continued...)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

Now. What did I mean by "explicitly" sociotechnical? I could have said that more clearly. What I am poking at is this longer thread of research and thinking on the critical, thoughtful side of things that almost exclusively focuses on the "socio-" part of sociotechnical. (continued...)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

Technology participates in, reinforces, and establishes social norms, laws, cultures, agendas, etc. Technology isn't neutral. "Sociotechnical" clarifies that the socio- part can't be separated from the -technical part. (See: Winner's classic "Do Artifacts have Politics?") (continued...)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 17/09/2026

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

via lethargic.talkative.fish/@suricrasia/...

The IBM slide but it's edited to say management can never be held accountable, therefore management must never make a management decision.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/09/2026

Probably one of my favorite examples of this is Turkopticon by @gleemie.bsky.social because the contributions aren't just policies, guidelines, or methods interventions but explicitly sociotechnical. I love that we have this lineage in HCI. I want more! dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

dl.acm.org

Turkopticon | Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/09/2026

I am gentle about it in my blog post, but this kind of work has not really gained traction in industry HCI work. And this isn't to discredit the work in academic spaces, of course. But we need more academics to embed themselves in practitioner spaces so we can operationalize our theory.

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𝕮 @chrisshank.com · 15/09/2026

This is great, thanks for sharing your reflections! Worth noting that this is a growing community and literature about aligning HCI against reinforcing hegemonic power.

arxiv.org

Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI

The HCI community has worked to expand and improve our consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased engagement, HCI continues t...

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𝕮 @chrisshank.com · 15/09/2026

@bmitra.bsky.social is also doing some wonderful organizing on the Information Retrieval side that is quite intersectional to HCI.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 16/09/2026

Thanks so much! And yes!! That paper in particular is on my shortlist of pieces that outline what real, concrete, material resistance could look like.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 11/09/2026

The gov has a lot of weapons they aren't allowed to use. A rogue AI is a great excuse to use them.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 11/09/2026

The only endgame I can see from this posturing (aside from trying to stoke market sentiments via fear) is that they are actually planning to destroy some of humanity (in service of their own industry and war). "It's so powerful it'll kill everyone!" Okay so you're planning to kill everyone.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 11/09/2026

Biggest conspiratorial conjecture I have: they're actively planning an attack on behalf of the government and will play it off as an autonomous act they couldn't control. This is the pre-attack PR to prime everyday people and build helplessness (aka consent). Post-attack it will be good PR too.

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 10/09/2026

Seems easier for a bot than it does for a person with a screen reader. Pretty awful haha. Like, genuinely have wondered whether someone might try to re-invent non-semantic pixel displays and here we are, in nightmare land. Hopefully it is just so unpopular that it doesn't stick as a pattern.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 10/09/2026

Awkward solution. Bots can and definitely will get around this, either through pressing the button to reveal the real text or by just using visual scraping and ocr/whatever methods.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 10/09/2026

Woah, this is.... this is a thing. I've wondered if there would be a pushback against scraping that would eventually end up making the web less accessible (less access for bots may end up in less access for many others). The assumption here is that vision is the entry point. cc @jonathanzong.com

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Celia @gusreads.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

"And I honestly wouldn’t like ideation, as this quintessentially human act, if I only ever did it alone or with a machine that simply confirms my biases and listens to my instructions." I recommend this text by @frank.computer to any creator, not only prototypers: www.frank.computer/blog/2026/03...

frank.computer

On genAI: Was prototyping really a bottleneck?

I keep hearing folks claim that the fact we can ‘prototype’ so quickly now is a good thing (thanks to modern genAI). But what if the slow parts about prototyping are actually what make it worth doing?

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 28/08/2026

Hell yeah. Glad to be union now (finally).

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 27/08/2026

My bluesky is bugging (keeps double posting??) but I love this.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Repair Day is coming up in Oct; I was asked to review my various Places articles on the subject over the past decade. It's nice when an accidental series emerges over time, when a single thread slowly braids itself with others — and you can continually reflect and revise your thinking.

Over the past decade I’ve written an accidental series of pieces for Places about repair: my “Maintenance and Care” (2018), which has been republished and translated widely, examined repair thinking across scales: from software and gadgets to interiors, architectures, and regional infrastructures. My “Step by Step” (2024) then explored the history of the repair manual, and asked if its utility might extend to social and ecological realms. Yet as I’ve grappled the fragility and irreparability of the human body through “Purity and Security” (2020), which addressed pandemic-era plexiglass as security theater, and “Concealment and Compassion” (2021), on the design of spaces for memory care — and as we’ve faced the inevitability of climate collapse and witnessed the cowardice of institutional leadership in the face of fascism — I’ve embraced the insufficiency of “repair” in addressing the profundity of dysfunction across sites and systems. I return to the article that initiated the whole series: “Community Plumbing” (2018) commemorated the sale of my family’s hardware store and explored the history of the site as a vital social infrastructure. It reminds me that we have the tools to reimagine and build anew; we have to teach one another how to use them.

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Rob Whiting 📓 @whitingx.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

“New 🇪🇺 #EU rules have come into force designed to encourage consumers to #Repair rather than replace products to tackle the estimated 35 million tonnes of waste the premature disposal of consumer goods generates across the bloc.” www.rte.ie/news/busines... #RightToRepair

rte.ie

New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

New EU rules have come into force aiming to tackle the 35 million tonnes of waste the premature disposal of consumer goods generates across the bloc.

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Effin' Birds @effinbirds.com · 21/08/2026

Never let a writer help you move

A cardboard moving box with EPHEMERA written on it in Sharpie

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

universities are not run by leftist profs they are run by corporate profiteer board members siphoning public $$ to tech partnerships "An Inside Higher Ed analysis of SEC filings turned up dozens of presidents paid handsomely for sitting on corporate boards." www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

the 10 presidents in Inside Higher Ed’s analysis who earned the most from outside board service in 2025.

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Grant Stoner @supercrip1994.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Fortnite's Audio Visualizer was an accessible mainstay. In April, Epic removed the crucial feature from Competitive, and in June, heavily nerfed the option in standard. Now, disabled players are left struggling to play. Read my latest @mothership.blog story here: www.mothership.blog/fortnites-au...

mothership.blog

Fortnite's audio visualizer is gone, leaving disabled gamers in the lurch

The visual wheel became popular with disabled and non-disabled players

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Rob Whiting 📓 @whitingx.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I’ve bookmarked a lot of really interesting and useful resources relating to making 📊 Data Visualisations more #Accessible and #Inclusive. A round-up a few of these resources that might be of interest and use to others. ⤵️

An illustration showing various data visualisation techniques including a pie chart, a bar chart and a line graph.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 19/08/2026

As the Trump administration ordered agencies to eradicate “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we identified more than 1,000 nonprofits that removed such language from the mission statements in their tax filings. (Published Dec. 2025)

propublica.org

Under Trump, More Than 1,000 Nonprofits Strip DEI Language From Tax Forms

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 18/08/2026

In this sense a lot of accessibility tech is actually conservative, in the sense described here by Joseph Weizenbaum

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 18/08/2026

AT often just patches, and in turn enables, inaccessible environments. Scarcity of access rarely just happens to exist and then can be patched with tech. It tends to exist for reasons. And at times, AT comes along and implicitly enables those reasons to continue, at times even magnify.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

If you have an election results chart, the alt text needs to communicate the results. "Election results" is not enough. The same rules apply for alt text for images of weather charts. "Weather chart" doesn't cut it and doesn't convey what the chart is actually saying to users.

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Nate O @nateo.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

You'd have to read to the thirteenth paragraph to discover the pull quote for the title was from Marcus Siding, a 23-year-old Swedish man living in Sweden that wanted to become a cop, but his ADHD diagnosis at the age of 12 barred him by law from becoming a Swedish cop Seems relevant

'“When my ADHD diagnosis was removed, it was a relief’
Rates of conditions such as ADHD and autism seem to be ever growing, but some adults diagnosed in childhood are happy to be free of their labels”

Excerpt From
“‘When my ADHD diagnosis was removed, it was a relief’”
The Times and The Sunday Times
https://apple.news/AdYlGGpX0SrG-Joy7OuhgMg
This material may be protected by copyright.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 03/08/2026

Yet another reminder why inaccessibility impacts everyone. If ads followed standards, then close buttons would be obvious to perceive, clear how to operate, and easy to press.

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Frankie Huang 黄碧赤 @ourobororoboruo.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I am making it a habit to always look for the labor story behind these nasty scandals. The consumers are almost never the only ones being harmed.

futurism.com

The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor

The lettuce-producing Taylor Farms was linked to the widespread use of prison labor before its involvement in a cyclospora outbreak.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 31/07/2026

Critical scholars pushing against something as "socially constructed" aren't dissing something for being fake. It's an invitation for 2 things: #1, to examine. First, how and why that thing was made and then what it does. And #2, to re-construct. If we learn from #1, we can do better.

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 31/07/2026

People hear that [thing] is a social construct and assume that "since it was made, it is artificial, it is inauthentic, it is fake." But something can be real *and* constructed. Inventions are real, but important *because* of their construction. Houses are real. (You get the point.)

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Frank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 31/07/2026

This problem extends to "artificial" as well. Yes, many things are made up. But there isn't always a "real" thing (in a platonic or structuralist sense) elsewhere. "Intelligence," as we use it, is also it's own model. So much misunderstanding comes from this false real vs not dichotomy.

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Carly Goodman @carlygoodman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Social constructs are just something big academia invented to sell more social constructs

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