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Sean Voisen

@seanvoisen.com
161 followers 148 following 140 posts

Trying to make computers better for human thinking and creativity. Currently leading design engineering at Adobe. Opinions own. Interwebs: seanvoisen.com Pronouns: he/him

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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
And all this is just from some cursory web searches. Maybe there’s more. After reading through everything, though, I still don’t know why the Xerox team chose Cookie Monster. (Alan Kay seems pretty active on Quora and I’m very tempted to ask .) (7/7)
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
What is going on? Turns out, there’s an article by Lucy Hunter for CLOT magazine documenting the entire cookie monster + tech phenomenon with some pretty solid cultural analysis. clotmag.com/oped/why-cookie-monster… (6/7)
clotmag.com
Why Cookie Monster is the mascot of Big Tech
Before eating cookies, Cookie Monster devoured computers. Contributor Lucy Hunter explains the relationship of the cookie monster with technology
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
Just this month The New Yorker published a new satirical article about AI featuring, you guessed it, Cookie Monster! www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/10/… (5/7)
newyorker.com
Cookie Monster Tries to Meet His A.I. Mandate
Me confused. Me know cookie inside and out! Now me has to use A.I. for cookie work?
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
Cookie Monster also appears in the 1995 movie Hackers as the face of malware. And in a 2016 ad for Apple’s Siri. And in a Sesame Street song about computers called the Cookie Computer Song. www.youtube.com/watch?v=148Rm-KcP2k (4/7)
youtube.com
Classic Sesame Street - Cookie Computer Song
From 1984. Even back then, cookies and computers went hand-in-hand.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
Soon I learned this wasn’t even Cookie Monster’s first appearance with big tech. That happened 6 years earlier in 1967, as part of a goofy internal ad for IBM called “Coffee Break Machine”. muppetmadness.com/jim-hensons-1967-… (3/7)
muppetmadness.com
Jim Henson's 1967 IBM Coffee Break Film: An Explosive Dark Satire
Explore Jim Henson's 1967 IBM Coffee Break training film! Watch a proto-Cookie Monster consume a talking computer and explode in this rare corporate satire gem.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
I started digging into it the other day when I learned that in 1973, when the Xerox team working on the Alto (the first PC) flipped the switch to turn it on for the very first time, they were greeted with a bitmap of the muppet’s grinning mug. I couldn’t help but wonder: Why?! (2/7)
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 03/10/2026
Here’s a stupid question I’ve recently become obsessed with: Why the heck does Cookie Monster seem to appear so frequently in tech culture and major tech “marketing moments”? 🧵 (1/7)
A black and white photograph from the 1970s showing Alan Kay in a laboratory setting, holding up a grid-patterned microchip design card. Behind him is a Xerox Alto, an early personal computer with a display screen showing an image of Cookie Monster.Larry Clark, Chuck Thacker, Alan Kay, and Ed McCreight in front of the Xerox ALTO in 1973.Screen grab of the Cookie Monster virus that appears in the 1995 movie Hackers.Cookie monster in IBM’s “Coffee Break Machine”
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 02/10/2026
I've been researching Smalltalk and adjacent history for a side-project in the evenings and stumbled on this gem in Kay's "Early History of Smalltalk." worrydream.com/EarlyHistory...
worrydream.com
The Early History Of Smalltalk
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 02/10/2026
Great shower thoughts in the history of computing: Alan Kay's idea for overlapping windows (invented at PARC for Smalltalk): "It occurred to me (in a shower, my favorite place to think) that FLEXtype windows on a bit-map display could be made to appear as overlapping documents on a desktop."
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 26/09/2026
Wrote a few words on AI and design systems. The TL;DR is something like: “you need humans.” But in my usual way I had to pull in high-minded bullshit like cybernetics, Ashby’s Law and invisible design ledgers. Sorry, not sorry 🙂 seanvoisen.com/writing/design-syste…
seanvoisen.com
What does design system AI readiness mean, anyway?
Maybe it's less about machine-legible artifacts and more about where humans stay in the loop.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 13/09/2026
Some writing only works if we let it do its work on us, the readers. New short post on Moonpointing about reading, writing, philosophy, Pierre Hadot, and words spent trying to describe the ineffable. moonpointing.org/blog/this-post-is-…
moonpointing.org
This post is not the moon
On Pierre Hadot and why it’s worth writing about what cannot be said.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 01/09/2026
RIP Wendell Berry, one of the world's great writers, champions of the environment, and exemplar of slow living. A few years ago I wrote about analog vs. digital tools, inspired by his "Why I Will Not Buy a Computer" which felt appropriate to revisit this morning. seanvoisen.com/writing/wend...
seanvoisen.com
Wendell Berry on the benefits of writing without a computer
What do we lose when we default to crafting our written words using purely digital tools?
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 31/08/2026
Great write-up, thanks for sharing! We're wrestling with very similar issues (of course) at Adobe on Spectrum, and I recently built an internal tool that is very similar to your DS agent tester. Checking yours out now to compare notes :)
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 30/08/2026
Just published my latest newsletter over at Moonpointing, which is a bit of a meditation coming out of a recent sabbatical on the purposes of sabbaticals, vacations, rest, and what exactly we should mean when we use the word “leisure.” moonpointing.org/newsletter/leisure
moonpointing.org
№3: Leisure
Four fallow weeks, Aristotle's scholê, and leisure as a capacity rather than a quantity.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 21/08/2026
The other night my wife and I watched the new Mary Oliver documentary and were moved to tears. I have one of her books (Devotions) and enjoy reading from it now and then, but something about hearing her poetry read out loud really hits differently. Highly recommended. youtu.be/B7bfYkgotBM
youtu.be
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World | Official Trailer | American Masters | PBS
Official website: http://www.pbs.org/americanmasters | #AmericanMastersPBS #maryoliver #poetry #poem #writing Celebrate the life and career of Pulitzer Prize...
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 21/08/2026
My mini sabbatical is coming to its end. After a month spent doing lots of reading and hiking, I’ve started writing again. Here’s a new essay on a new, dedicated domain for my personal newsletter and philosophical musings: moonpointing.org/blog/in-praise-of-…
moonpointing.org
In praise of things
On ukuleles, jukeboxes, and the joys of durable things.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 31/07/2026
Scenes from today's hike.
A sweeping coastal landscape view looking down a grassy hillside valley toward a pristine beach and turquoise ocean. A dramatic rocky sea stack rises from the water in the distance, with rolling golden grassland-covered ridges framing the vista under a clear blue sky.Four elk grazing on a coastal hillside covered with dried grasses and brush, with the turquoise ocean visible behind them under a clear blue sky.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 24/07/2026
Starting today I'm off work for an entire month! (Mini sabbatical). Plans: Head to a cabin, read a lot of books, wander the local trails, journal and maybe blog a bit. Mostly focus on being a human being instead of a human doing.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 10/07/2026
Watching my 9-year-old make a game in PICO-8 by painstakingly copying Lua code character by character from examples. Just like how I learned to code when I was a kid. He knows AI exists, but doesn't know it can write code, and I'm not telling him yet 🙂
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 07/07/2026
My copy of "The Psychology of Software Teams" by @grimalkina.bsky.social just arrived. Already read the first few pages and can tell it's gonna be a good read.
Book cover for "The Psychology of Software Teams" by Cat Hicks, held in my hand in front of a blurred bookshelf. The cover features a bright coral-red background with a layered mountain landscape photograph at its center, showing snow-capped peaks in the distance and colored mountain ranges in earthy tones. Overlaid on the mountain scene are white statistical distribution curves and dashed vertical lines, suggesting data visualization and analysis. The title appears in white serif and sans-serif text at the top. The author's name "CAT HICKS" is displayed in white at the bottom, along with the CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group logo.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 06/07/2026
Good question, haven't tried that! Definitely haven't gone through a process of making it robust enough to release in the wild.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 06/07/2026
All the processing is on the phone, so I need to have my phone with me for any of it to work.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/07/2026
Best thing I've built for myself with Claude Code: An Apple Watch app I use for capturing ideas while out on long walks. I talk to my watch, it takes transcription, runs it through LLM, and spits out a cleaned up version in Markdown. Saves to iCloud. All on-device AI using CoreML.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/07/2026
A philosophical meditation on the importance of the physical, tangible world, and how our dwelling in the "infosphere"—the world of digital objects and "non-things"—has caused us to lose touch with that which matters most. Classic Han; short, accessible, but meandering.
Book cover for "Non-things" by Byung-Chul Han, held in someone's hand in front of a blurred bookshelf. The cover features a photograph of the New York City skyline at sunset with warm orange and pink light illuminating the buildings against a dusky sky. The title "Non-things" appears in elegant serif font at the top in black text on a cream-colored background.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/07/2026
Re-visited The Dispossessed for the first time after at least a decade. Enjoyed it even more during my second read; remains one of my favorites by Le Guin.
Book cover for "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin, 50th Anniversary Edition, held in someone's hand in front of a bookshelf. The cover features bold abstract artwork with geometric shapes in red, blue, and green, depicting stylized human silhouettes against a dark background with radiating lines. The author's name appears in red at the top, the title in gold text in the center.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/07/2026
I first encountered the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen on the Dialectic Podcast and immediately bought his book, The Score. Loved it—a philosophy of games that gets you rethinking how you make choices and measure your own success in life. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF1-...
Book cover for "The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game" by C. Thi Nguyen, photographed on a wooden surface. The cover features a bright blue sky background with white clouds. Three white circles are arranged vertically down the center, containing the title, subtitle, and author name in white text.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/07/2026
Very behind on maintaining this thread. Here's a giant batch update ... Rise of the Machines: Comprehensive history of cybernetics and its influence on modern computing. While I was familiar with much of this history already, it was a welcome refresher. Worth a read if cybernetics is new to you.
Book cover for "Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History" by Thomas Rid, photographed on a wooden surface. The cover features a black background with large white sans-serif title text. At the top is a glowing yellow-green orb against the black. Below the title is a small waveform icon. The subtitle appears in golden yellow text.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 25/06/2026
📝 AI has made it easier than ever to start things, and harder than ever to finish. seanvoisen.com/thinking/202...
seanvoisen.com
Finishing
On perseverance and care as anti-slop.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 20/06/2026
Of course, most tools bake in *some* kind of service to justify a subscription. But a lot of tools can be "bring your own service." E.g. Obsidian, where you can pay for sync, or just use Dropbox or iCloud. Small, local-first, well-built software you *own*—I hope we see growth in that space.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 20/06/2026
Could be wishful thinking, but my hypothesis is that AI changes the economics of software production such that for any app which is mostly fixed cost (i.e. no service dependency) one-time licensing per major version release is viable (albeit not as attractive to makers).
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 20/06/2026
Remember when you used to pay a one-time license fee for great software, and then owned it for life? Wondering if we'll see a resurgence of that pricing model in the coming years.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 20/06/2026
I find myself wanting tight loops on design and UX, where I need to "feel" the work as it proceeds. But willing to delegate long-running technical work once I have detailed plans. Feels like oscillating focus between deep planning in batches and kicking those off, then jumping back into design.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 19/06/2026
How I explain Claude Code to non-techies: "It's a very expensive computer program for generating other computer programs."
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 19/06/2026
Local inference remains largely ignored. You can run 35B Qwen on an M5 Max today, and consumer hardware will improve. I suspect in a few years the default will be local-first inference with escalation to frontier models as needed. Anyway, worth a read: backofmind.substack.com/p/tokenalysi...
backofmind.substack.com
tokenalysis and john henry
I have a few things to write about, but am now conscious of what ought to be going here and what ought to be going into the manuscript… so, instead of more stuff about governance and the problem facto...
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 10/06/2026
AI can be an amazing tool for improving software quality. But instead, what I often see going to market are slop imitations and excessive new features nobody asked for. The pursuit of speed over quality is going to bite us.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 10/06/2026
This should be a golden age of robust, reliable software. But so far that doesn't seem to be happening. I pointed Fable 5 at a personal Rust project last night. It identified 2 possible crashes and a few points of possible failure related to data corruption and DB writes I hadn't even noticed.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 06/06/2026
About half-way through "On the Calculation of Volume" (Book I). Quiet, slow, meditative, repetitive, deep focus on seemingly mundane details ... a welcome reprieve to the pace of *everything else* in the world right now. Great way to wind down an evening.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/06/2026
Guess I need to write a blog post about why "prototyping in production" using AI is not the panacea everyone seems to think it is for the supposed problem of "designer-developer hand-off."
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 05/06/2026
This was great. Made a note to preorder. (Also I do manage software teams so I'm excited to read it.)
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 26/05/2026
"Building things is easy. Evaluating what you build is hard. It requires lots of attention. Therefore, build things that you want to pay lots of attention to." Never has this been more true in software. akkartik.name/post/tmol
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 21/05/2026
Thank you! Sorry, I just fixed my DM settings. Sent you a message.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 21/05/2026
I would love to talk to more academics who use these tools daily for real work. I built this tool for myself—to scratch my own itch as someone who loves reading research papers. But I'm hoping to shape it into something *you* would use. DMs open if you'd be willing to chat & want a demo.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 21/05/2026
Hello #AcademicSky #ResearchSky, I'm building a new, local-first library/citation manager (for fun). Zotero is great, but I've long wanted something more modern. I have a lot working: auto metadata hygiene, local LLM, full-text search, semantic similarity, plugins. But, I'm not a researcher! (1/2)
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 15/05/2026
I use Claude Code with Obsidian for brainstorming and rough outlines (I don't like really strict outlines). Since my Readwise highlights are also in Obsidian it helps make all kinds of connections between my own thoughts and material I've highlighted previously.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 07/05/2026
Thank you Szymon!
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 07/05/2026
Turned 45 today. It's been a little quiet on my blog, so in honor of the day, I made a little list of 45 things I have enjoyed in my life, and feel more people should try or know about. seanvoisen.com/writing/fort...
seanvoisen.com
45 things
A list, in no particular order, of things I think more people should try or know about.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 27/04/2026
Me to every LLM: Say “it's not just a ___, it’s a ___” one more time. I dare you. I double dare you.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 17/04/2026
I’ve been doing exactly this. Would be happy to share and chat if interested.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 27/03/2026
Been increasingly curious how writers and academics manage reading and sources across long projects. Heard everything from "pristine Zotero libraries" to "a folder of PDFs I'll organize someday." If juggling sources is part of your work and you're up for it, I'd love a 15-20 min chat.
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Sean Voisen @seanvoisen.com · 07/03/2026
Babel-17 is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis dramatized as space opera. Since I've been on a linguistics kick I thought I'd try it, but I honestly didn't care for it. It's 60s new wave era with sexism and a bit of Asian fetishism tossed in. Flat story. I finished it because it's short, but ... meh.
Book cover of 'Babel-17' by Samuel R. Delany on a gray textured surface. The cover features a black background with 'Winner of the Nebula Award' in orange text at the top. The title 'Babel-17' appears in large white italic lettering in the center, with the author's name 'Samuel R. Delany' in orange below. A geometric abstract design in orange and gold fills the lower portion of the cover, consisting of interlocking angular maze-like patterns that suggest complexity and linguistic structure.
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