Thoughts on How to Speak Machine

How to Speak MachinePicked up John Maeda’s How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us and read through it pretty quickly, but I’m not sure it was a worthwhile read for me and I don’t think I’d recommend it for anyone already familiar with modern software design.

Maeda spends the majority of the book’s 200 pages explaining the basics and extolling the value of UX research, product design, agile delivery, and iterative development and comparatively little on the actual premise of the book.

Both Amazon and Maeda frame the book as a way for designers to understand “the complex world of AI and machine learning”, but while it hints at AI’s transformative potential these mentions are more speculative than practical. There really isn’t any actionable insights or detailed explorations of how AI can concretely impact design work today.

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Zelda to star in new The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom game

Finally, Zelda herself will be the main protagonist in a mainline game in the series named after her. (Not counting CD-i games.) Yesterday, Nintendo surprise announced The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom coming already this September to Switch:

Looks pretty darn great. Like a cross between the Link’s Awakening remake with some of the open ended puzzle solving ideas from Tears of the Kingdom.

While I like that the gameplay isn’t just palette swapped Zelda for Link hack and slash, I do hope that Zelda is actually able to occasionally solve some of her problems by murdering a bunch of moblins with a sword. Pretty excited for this one, might be one last great hurrah for the Switch before the next console comes out in 2025.