Dept. of Minor Observations
A repository of bulletins, field reports, working papers, and notices concerning small thoughts, odd details, internet archaeology, abandoned drafts, and gentle critiques of modern digital culture. Items are classified, stamped, and filed accordingly.
Draft remarks on the QR code in the wild
The QR code disappeared for approximately a decade after its invention.
It was considered a failed format. It was an answer to a question nobody was
asking. It required a dedicated app to scan a thing that your eye could not
read.
The pandemic restored purpose. Restaurant menus, check-ins, payment systems.
The QR code returned not because it had been improved but because the world
had reorganised itself around the assumption that a camera existed in every pocket or bag.
The Department is reconsidering its position on whether formats can be just be
ahead of their time, or whether timing is the format. This paper remains
under reconsideration pending a clearer view of what this distinction
would imply.
Third Bulletin: On Helvetica
Revised following correspondence.
The Department's earlier position — that Helvetica's ubiquity
represented a kind of typographic surrender — has been moderated.
Revised position: Helvetica is not a neutral choice. No typeface is a
neutral choice. Helvetica signals modernity, institutional confidence,
and a studied reluctance to call attention to itself — which is itself
a form of calling attention to itself. This is the choice of a typeface that says "we
have not chosen a typeface" is among the most deliberate of typeface choices
available.
The Department's concern about ubiquity stands. The characterisation
of it as a form of surrender is fully withdrawn.
Field Report: The Out-of-Office reply as a literary genre
The out-of-office reply has developed into a minor literary form with
remarkable conventions. It opens with an acknowledgement of
personal absence. It specifies a return date. It names a colleague for urgent
matters. It closes with either nothing or the slightest warmth.
Variation within the form is limited but revealing. The early-return
gamble ("or sooner"). The geographical coverage caveat ("limited access to email").
The aspirational note of hope ("I look forward to responding on my return,"
written by a person who is not likely to be looking forward to this).
Most interesting is the case where the return date has passed and the
reply remains activated. The message continues to describe an absence that
has presumably ended. The possibilities for its continued use give rise to multiple speculations. The author is probably present but the message seems to insists otherwise. The Department offers no further recommendations. It is just interesting.
Preliminary notes on the 404 Page as self-portrait
The 404 page — displayed when a requested web page cannot be found — has
become an unofficial genre of institutional self-expression. Where the
rest of a corporate website is subject to close brand review, legal clearance,
and multiple stakeholder sign-off, the 404 page is often left to a developer to complete on a Friday afternoon.
The results are disproportionately revealing. Jokes that no other page
would permit, mascots that appear nowhere else, candour about failure
that the polished homepage would never allow. The 404 page is what is found at the back of the drawer — the place where the organisation keeps the version of itself
that it does not officially endorse or see the need to formally condone.
These notes are preliminary. A full taxonomy of 404 page types is
anticipated.
Notice regarding the ellipsis in menu design
The Department draws attention to a convention so established it has
become invisible to scrutiny. The ellipsis following a menu item.
"Save As…" means this action requires further information before it
can proceed. "Save" means the action will happen now. The ellipsis is
a small promise of more beyond. That you will
be consulted further before it does something useful.
The convention is old, precise, and almost entirely ignored by software
produced in the last fifteen years, where "Delete" and "Delete…" are
treated as interchangeable and the difference between acting and
asking has been quietly retired.
Filed. The Department does not expect further improvement in the situation.
On things that are still the same website
A partial inventory of websites that have been "completely redesigned"
and remain, in all essential respects, the same website.
The site that moved its navigation from the top to the left and called
this a significant transformation. The site that replaced its blue buttons with
slightly darker blue buttons and announced a new era in transparency. The site that
enlarged its hero image and described this as a shift in strategic
direction.
The Department is not opposed to redesign. It is welcomed. The Department is noting
that the announcement of redesign often precedes the redesign itself
by a considerable interval, and sometimes an announcement replaces the need for a redesign entirely.
Report on photographs taken of food before eating
The practice is now so established it requires no explanation to name
it. What interests the Department is not the act but the intended audience. In
many cases, no image is ever posted. The photograph is taken and
remains on the device, unshared, until it is quietly deleted to free
up storage.
The meal was photographed for no one. Or for the photographer, at some
imagined future moment of review that never arrives. Or perhaps the
act of photographing the meal is the thing — a brief ceremony of
attention before consumption, a small ritual that says, "I noticed this
food that I am now eating"".
The Department considers this purpose, on reflection, not an unreasonable
impulse.
Notes on the word "Ecosystem" in product marketing
An ecosystem, properly understood, is a system of mutual dependence in
which many species coexist, with no single participant in control of
the whole. It is characterised by levels of redundancy, constant competition and the
threat of catastrophic collapse from a destablised system.
Product marketing has adopted the word to now mean a range of products by
the same manufacturer that work well together and poorly with
everything else. This is closer to a plantation than an ecosystem.
The Department is reconsidering whether to object to this usage or
whether the original meaning of "ecosystem" now requires similar scrutiny.
Both positions have merit. The paper remains open.
On the persistence of the "Any Key"
The instruction "press any key to continue" was common in software of
the 1980s and 1990s. The "any key" does not exist as a labelled key on
any keyboard produced before or since.
The instruction persisted for decades. People would press Enter, or Space,
or sometimes A, having decided that A was close enough to "any." The
instruction was technically correct and practically confusing and
nobody changed it because it worked.
The Department notes this as a case study in interface language that
is accurate without being in any way helpful, and wonders how many such cases
remain in current production systems, unexamined because they also,
broadly, work.