It’s been a while since I wrote anything for Medium. I’ve been focused on learning the skills I need to thrive as an entrepreneur.

I do marketing work with Sohr Foods, as a job and a great ongoing learning experience. Joey Jaraczewski, the CEO, likes to begin our weekly meetings with quotes about food and philosophy.

Here is the quote he chose this week:

“What nourishes is the primary soul; what is nourished is the body which has this soul; and that by which it is nourished is nourishment (i.e. food).”

-Aristotle, De Anima

This fascinated me, because I’ve always been interested in the nature of our souls. It’s also interesting, because healthy food has become a central theme of my entrepreneurial experience.

I want to share my interpretation of this quote with the community to see how it resonates with you:

When thinking about the soul, I always go back to the metaphor of an artist and her paintbrush. The soul is the artist, the body is the paintbrush, and life is the canvas.

The body “has the soul” in the same way that a paintbrush “has” an artist. A soul cannot act in this physical world without being tied to the body. An artist cannot paint without a brush. Souls have some purpose they wish to accomplish in the physical plane, and human bodies are the tools they have to use to do so.

In this framing, the body is a tool that needs to be maintained in order to be most effective. Taking care of the physical body is how we as souls, maintain the tool. Feeding good food to your body is an equivalent act to an artist cleaning his brushes between uses.

An undernourished body is as useful as a paintbrush caked with old paint. You can still use an abused and frayed paintbrush, but your art will suffer as a result of your negligence.

I like this framework because it means that each life is a work of art. And it’s not fair. Some artists get fine sable brushes and others get cheap synthetic bristles. But by maintaining your brush (nourishing your body) you make the best possible work out of what you’re given.

For whatever reason, our souls keep binding themselves to these physical bodies, despite their limitations. I can only imagine the primary soul gets frustrated by the quirks and obstacles inherent to physical existence as a human. Artists also get frustrated by the gap between their artistic vision and what they can accomplish with their chosen medium.

Nonetheless, artists continue to paint, and souls continue to reside in these silly human bodies. Something about this state of existence continues to appeal to the soul, just as art continues to appeal to the artist, despite the frustrations inherent to both.

— — —

Please let me know if this strikes a chord with you. If you think dualism is a crock, like my friend Yousif once said, please let me know in the comments.

But whatever you believe about our souls, please eat some healthy food and take care of your paintbrush.

I’m going to walk to the Whitaker Community Market now and buy some veggies to get me through next week.

This bodes well for my new home.

Before I even started packing, I connected with the Eugene Innovators Meetup group. I was able to sign up for some events and reach out to potential mentors in preparation for my move.

While my girlfriend and I were house hunting back in December, I noticed RAIN and Fertilab, two local startup incubators/community spaces. They’re both right in the middle of downtown and host a lot of the meetup events.

During my first week I stopped by the open mentor hours at Fertilab. I met one of the Meetup group’s moderators and Micah Elconin, a major figure in the local food and beverage industry.

This worked out serendipitously because I’ve just started developing a new food product. I’ll be posting more about that in the next two weeks.

A few days into my time in Eugene and I’d already found sources of guidance and community.

The next week I went to a coffee meetup at RAIN. Many business owners, entrepreneurs, and great people were there.

Everyone, even the most seasoned business people, was incredibly friendly. People were genuinely interested in my goals and I learned a lot from the folks I met.

One of the most interesting people I met was Lauren Jerome. She helps run Redefining Women In Tech, a community organization founded to empower women in STEM fields.

RWIT recently partnered with Mozilla’s Gigabit Community Fund to put on one of the upcoming events. I had actually signed up for the event a few days ago, and I didn’t even realize Lauren was its host when I met her.

Lauren, RWIT, and Mozilla are going to stream the upcoming talk “Extreme Collaboration: Getting Ahead with Unexpected Allies” in 4k. They will have to separate physocal locations, but the 4k stream will make it feel like they’re in the same room.

So far there’s a constant stream of events here.

Today I’m going to Barcamp, a lais back “un-conference” for people to share their ideas.

I also just got my ticket for Startup Weekend, the yearly event that’s part of a partnership with Google.

Something in these emerald hills must smell like growth to Tech companies, because it seems like big names are starting to invest considerable resources here.

People even predict that The Willamette Valley might grow some Silicon ferns in the near future.

Portland has already been dubbed “The Next Silicon Valley” by some. As tech companies begin to relocate up north it’s inevitable that some settle down in Eugene.

There is a seismic shift happening in American politics.

As the tectonic plates collide, new mountains emerge on our political landscape.

Internal upheaval plagues both major parties. 2018’s midterm elections will lead to a congressional makeover.

For better or worse, Trump has redefined what it means to be president. The doors are open wide for all manner of speculation as to which celebrities will run for president in 2020.

Out of all of the possible candidates, the one I see as most viable and impactful is Mark Zuckerberg.

Bloggers and journalists are speculating more frequently about his potential political plans.

From his Harvard commencement speech, to his nationwide meet-and-greet road trip,Zuckerberg has been looking more and more like a confident public figure. He’s even hired former Obama campaign staffers to aid in his philanthropic efforts.

This has forced me to ponder a series of important questions:

1. Is it ethical for the CEO of the most powerful media company in the world to run for president?
2. What would Zuckerberg’s election mean for American politics?
3. Do ethics even matter in politics?

In short: no, a massive paradigm shift, probably not.

You all deserve a more detailed explanation of those answers, though.

1. Is it ethical for the CEO of the most powerful media company in the world to run for president?

Facebook’s impact on politics has been a hot topic for the past year.

There were a number of controversies related to bias in the news feed and fake ads from foreign sources during this election. We’re still dealing with fallout from the ad scandal.

Facebook shows no signs of scaling back its involvement with political advertising, though.

As the man in charge of Facebook, Zuckerberg’s decisions have a profound impact on our collective consciousness. He can reshape our understanding of reality by mediating the information we use to navigate the modern world.

It terrifies me to think of how that would be weaponized in a presidential campaign.

It doesn’t matter whether Trump, Clinton, Winfrey, Ryan, Warren, Sanders, Turner, or Steyer runs against him. Their propaganda capabilities are nothing compared to Zuckerberg’s.

No one understands the inner workings of modern media like Zuckerberg and his team. No one could possibly manipulate the news more than them.

Facebook actually has a built in system of political categorization. Facebook tracks every ad you interact with to build up a profile of your interests and attitudes. It’s far more sensitive and comprehensive than any political party’s voter database.

When the dust has settled after the Russian ad scandal and Facebook’s new security is in place, he will also understand the new rules of the game better than anyone else.

A tool this powerful is unheard of in American politics.

I can’t imagine a world where Zuckerberg, or at least his close associates at Facebook, would not use the news feed to tailor what information people get.

Even if he “officially” steps down as CEO to run in 2020, his involvement with Facebook is so deep that he will never truly be gone.

I feel like it would benefit us to just start the ethics investigation now.

If Zuckerberg runs for president, he or someone close to him will manipulate Facebook algorithms to help his campaign. We probably won’t realize it until after the election, though, just like the Russian ads.

That is obviously a massive breach of ethics.

There’s another ethics issue, though, that’s a bit more nuanced.

It’s a new issue that was never this relevant until we had a prominent businessman running for president.

Midway through the election, analysts struck up a fierce debate about what should happen with Trump’s business assets if he’s elected.

There was massive controversy over Trump’s business ties and whether or not he would use his power to benefit himself and his business ties.

One side said he should put his business in a blind trust. The other side defended Trump’s right to put it in his children’s hands.

As it stands, Trumps two eldest sons run the business along with their trusted CFO.

So far, the GOP’s actions have served to directly benefit Trump and his fellow business people. The recent tax bill, for example, disproportionately benefited rich people like Trump.

While it may seem like Zuckerberg would be forced to step down from his position at Facebook when he runs for president, that’s not necessarily the case.

Facebook restructured its shareholder agreements in 2016 in a way that will allow him to remain on Facebook’s board while working in government.

That means that Zuckerberg will simultaneously be president and a board member of the most influential media platform ever, as long as the other board members vote to allow it.

I can’t see why they wouldn’t, because this would regularly put them in the room with this country’s most influential decision maker.

There’s really no reason other than public opinion that a businessman would not run for president.

All objections that people raised about Trump’s business ties were from Democrats, who are historically less business-friendly than Republicans. As long as few enough people are concerned about Zuckerberg’s business ties he will have no trouble running for president.

By the end of Trump’s term we will have a clearer picture of the relationship between a former businessman president and his business assets.

It’s important to have a discussion about whether or not its ethical for a businessman to run for President. That power can easily be abused for personal benefit.

In my opinion, the president’s primary obligation should be to the entire public, not ones own financial benefits. Zuckerberg’s constituency lives within Facebook’s walls, and they’re the most likely to benefit from his presidency.

His past and future commitments would be an obstacle to him truly serving the American people.

2. What would Zuckerberg’s election mean for American politics?

Trump and Zuckerberg are both businessmen with political aspirations.

The key difference between them, however, is that Trump is an aging relic of another era, while Zuckerberg is a key player in the modern world.

Zuckerberg’s influence and intellect far outstrip Trump’s. It’s like Bobby Fischer playing chess with a middle school checkers champion.

As president, he will have a finely crafted strategy, a team of legitimate experts, and a deep understanding of modern technology.

Most importantly, Zuckerberg is used to basing his actions on carefully calculated metrics and analytics. This is key to how he operates.

Where Trump acts with bluster and bravado, Zuckerberg will proceed in precise steps and polished public appearances.

“A lot of people already associate Zuckerberg with something they like — Facebook. That alone is enough to get a lot of people to vote for him”

Although the two are both businessmen, the nature of their businesses is different as well.

Trump’s real estate deals involved heavy manipulation of public opinion and the mass media, which were newspapers and television at the time. His contracts were between him and other developers, though.

Zuckerberg’s contract is directly with the public who uses his platform, though. He has much more of a commitment than Trump ever did as a businessman to act in the public’s interest. If he missteps too much, we will inevitably leave Facebook for its competitors.

Zuckerberg already has experience dealing with the public and being held accountable for his actions. A huge part of being president is taking heat, and Marky Mark is getting better at that every day.

Not only does he have experience with public affairs, but he has international diplomatic experience.

His recent failure, Free Basics, involved meetings with India’s prime minister, a massive public utility project, and a lot of complicated negotiations.

Although the project was widely criticized, Zuckerberg got his feet wet with international diplomacy. He’s now even more of a player on the world stage.

The Zuckerberg administration would contrast dramatically with Trump’s.

It would be calculated, far more efficient, and data-driven in a way that we’ve never seen before.

In the interest of growing Facebook’s audience globally, he might enact laws that make international business easier and more profitable.

He might open up even more tax loopholes that allow corporations like his to hide profits abroad.

His cabinet would also be filled with business-minded technocrats who would help him create an economic environment where the tech world’s interests come first.

Zuckerberg will meet with tech industry leaders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to plan out a tech-driven future where we’re largely dependent on their products. He might even make it easier for Elon Musk to pursue his massive projects like the Hyperloop.

Whether this will be good or bad remains to be seen. Many people criticize the worldview that Musk and other technocrats endorse, but their vision is gaining more traction every day.

Zuckerberg’s status as a businessman means that he looks out for himself before he looks out for other people.

Even though he runs a public corporation, he is not a public servant. He serves himself and Facebook’s investors.

But what’s his voting base?

One of the most important questions surrounding his possible campaign is which political party Zuckerberg would choose to run with.

The obvious choice might be the Democrats, given Facebook’s seemingly progressive leanings.

People tend to think of American politics as an exclusively two-party system, even though it is not excplicitly so. Upon real examination the closest analogue to Zuckerberg in our political history is an independent from the 90’s — Ross Perot.

Perot, like Zuckerberg, was CEO of a billion-dollar tech business. He used his influence and powers of persuasion that he gained during his career to run the most successful third-party presidential campaign ever.

Perot showed us that there is a genuine hunger for policies outside of those offered by the two main parties. Trump’s victory showed us that people are still hungry for outsider thinking.

Now, in 2020, Zuckerberg will respond to that hunger with the most technologically sophisticated political campaign ever.

Zuckerberg will use his outsider status and media influence to completely bulldoze the political establishment.

He almost doesn’t even need to campaign. A lot of people already associate Zuckerberg with something they like — Facebook. That alone is enough to get a lot of people to vote for him.

If Zuckerberg runs and wins in 2020 it will result in a total overhaul of our political system.

The tech industry’s political ethos has become more clear in recent years. It’s a mix of liberal social standards and libertarian (de)regulatory practices.

As tech takes over more and more of our lives, the tech industry will have more and more political clout.

Democrats and Republicans will steadily lose power and influence under president Zuckerberg. 2020 might be that last election where these political behemoths are relevant.

He will reform the executive branch to be data-driven at an unprecedented level.

As I mentioned before, tech plutocrats like Bezos and Musk will be influential in policy decisions, whether or not they are officially cabinet members.

Zuckerberg will reshape America in Facebook’s image, and it seems likely that that will push us towards the world of Ready Player One.

The technocratic takeover will be underway the second he wins.

These are more predictions than they are ethical concerns. There is nothing explicitly unethical about promoting business interests as president.

It’s important for us to consider possible outcomes of his rise to power now, though, before the media cranks up the political carousel for another rotation.

3. Do ethics even matter in politics?

The final question is larger and dicier than any I’ve ever tried to answer before.

It’s hard to tell how much and whether or not ethics matter in politics. Ethics are so subjective, and change so much over time, that it’s almost impossible to answer that question.

Each individual has a unique ethical framework, whether or not they’ve consciously thought about it. These frameworks shape our realities, and it can be hard to imagine that other people’s ethics might be completely different from ours.

We all remember the shock when we first heard that voters chose Trump.

Many people were left wonder how someone so blatantly unethical could win the election. Many people saw no ethical concerns at all with Trump’s election.

Ethics has a squishy role in politics.

Ethics matters far less than public opinion. Despite Trump’s many ethical issues, there were enough voters who decided that he was fit for office. That’s enough to become president.

This is how I would sum up the role of ethics in a politician’s life:

Do what ever you want. You will be successful as long as you make enough money to pay good lawyers and can apologize sincerely whether or not you mean it.

-Jeremy Cummings

That sounds bleak but unless you mess up as frequently and heinously as Anthony Weiner you can probably still save your political career.

In many ways ethical rules in congress take on a similar role to the pirate code in Pirates of the Carribean.

There are plenty of ethical lawmakers, however.

John McCain, as much as I disagree with his politics, is a paragon of congressional ethics. There is also a growing number of “Justice Democrats” who have made an ethical commitment to never accept corporate campaign donations.

John McCain is on his way out, though, from congress and life unfortunately. Justice Democrats are also still a minority within their party at this point.

On a congressional level and below, your ethics have to match those of your constituents. It’s different on the presidential level, though.

Ethical norms vary widely from state to state. The grand sum of all of our values is a big beautiful gray area.

If Mark Zuckerberg can convince enough people to make him president, it doesn’t matter what he does. Ethics go out the window if our democracy says so.

It’s important to remember that there are no explicit ethics outlined in the constitution. According to Article II, all you need to do to qualify yourself for the presidency is be born in America and make it to 35.

Beyond that, fitness for office is decided entirely by how many votes you can win.

All of the ethical concerns I raised in this article are insignificant to people with different backgrounds and values.

Mark Zuckerberg, the architect of modern communication, the man behind the media, the first digital statesman, can do no wrong if the people say he’s their president.

I’m confident that he could convince America to do that.

Thank you for reading my longest Medium post ever! Hit that clap button a few times if you enjoyed reading this.

Who is your ideal candidate for 2020? Oprah? Bernie? Clinton? Tell me why in the comments.

If you don’t already have an account on Medium, please make one asap. That way you can connect with more great content on the site, and I can know what my readers enjoy reading most based on your claps. It’ll be better for everyone.

And as always, feel free to follow me on Twitter @jeremycummings3 or on Instagram @so.tall.im.in.space!

Every currency has a symbol that goes with it. The dollar, yen, euro, shekel, ruble, and every other currency that exists has a unique character we use with it.

Articles about Bitcoin use USD to describe the amount of value being traded. This is largely a practical move, because there is no widespread understanding of one bitcoin’s value.

We all know what a dollar is worth, but one bitcoin is a less understood concept.

However, a bitcoin is not a dollar so using the same symbol to describe its value won’t work.

Eventually, though, we’ll need to integrate new characters for cryptocurrencies into our writing.

An easy move would be to add the bitcoin logo into typefaces. The B with two lines through it looks like many existing currencies symbols and it would be easy for people to comprehend.

Turns out that’s already the symbol for bitcoin: ₿. It looks different enough from the Bhat symbol: ฿.

I don’t like how similar they are, though, and the two symbols could easily become confused.

Let’s get creative.

I took five minutes and sketched out some ideas for potential symbols. They follow the general style of existing currency symbols. Most symbols use the first letter of the currency’s name.

(I should have googled these symbols before I started, though. Litecoin already has a unicode symbol: Ł. Good work Litecoin.)

I like my design better. The Ł looks close enough to the Lira ( ₺), Pound ( £), and Lempira (L) symbols that they could be confused.

I’m definitely biased toward my creation. I think it stamps out Litecoin’s identity as a tool of the economic revolution more effectively..

These are easy to understand and write. It would make a lot of sense to take a utilitarian approach like this to creating symbols for cryptocurrencies.

We could also take a more artistic approach.

This symbol for Ripple emulates ripples on a pond.

Cryptocurrencies don’t follow the rules of conventional currencies in the way we derive value from them.

There’s no reason for cryptos to follow rules of typography either.

Most currency symbols use the first letter of the currency’s name to give it a recognizable identity. We don’t necessarily need to do that with crypto symbols.

If we can visualize the technical structure of each cryptocurrency, for instance the typical blockchain vs Iota’s tangle, that could also serve as an effective icon. Icons of this type will give us a sense of how the currencies actually work.

Once cryptocurrencies have scaled and stabilized, we will need new symbols to easily integrate them into our language.

The dollar sign is going to be out of style before we know it.

Thanks for reading!

What are your thoughts on cryptocurrencies and the symbols we’ll use to represent them? Do you think that cryptos will even last long enough for these symbols to be a necessity? Or do you think this whole thing is just a passing fad.

Let me know.

If you want to stay up to date with me, feel free to follow me on here, on Twitter @JeremyCummings3 or on Instagram @so.tall.im.in.space.

When I’m pondering something as revolutionary as blockchain I always take the idea and run it as far as possible in my brain.

That’s how I got to wondering about this question. Blockchain has potential applications in a lot of different industries, but what if everything was run on blockchain?

In short, it would be a disaster.

Blockchain is perfect in my eyes for most financial functions. Banking and investing would benefit from an improved verification and security paradigm.

Any setting where credibility is more important than speed could use blockchain. It’s security is unprecedented, but as people make more transactions the network inevitably slows down.

I also think a blockchain to manage all transactions between us and the impending self-driving car fleets would be super useful.

Imagine a grocery store blockchain, though.

Unless there was a system of ordering your groceries ahead of time, or your smart fridge automatically tracked and ordered how much food you need, it would be terrible.

You can’t make people wait 78 minutes for their transaction to process if they’re just going to the store for milk and eggs.

Imagine signing up for college classes with a blockchain.

You would have to input your private key every time you registered and likely every time you attended class.

A decentralized self-regulating registration system would also make asking for help a nightmare. It’s hard enough for many students to get enough guidance in our existing systems.

The social implications of everything being blockchain are also somewhat frightening.

There is one blockchain project called Civic, which wants to establish itself as a new standard for personal verification.

If we turn into a society where we can only trust people who are tracked and verified through the blockchain, then the quality of our relationships will decline.

People already use social networks to stalk people and obsess over each others lives. A personal verification blockchain would have to manage every social interaction you make though. That would enable next-level stalking.

Some people forsee useful applications of blockchain on the advertising side of social media, but using it to regulate the user-to-user social interactions would not be good.

The slowness that plagues Bitcoin transactions right now would also likely gum up our social networks if the social blockchain has to manage social transactions on the scale of Facebook.

Blockchain can help a lot of industries, but not every single one.

The reason everyone’s talking about blockchain, Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies lately is because the money-making potential has skyrocketed.

Bitcoin in particular has been all over the news lately due to its dramatic volatility. One day it’s the most valuable thing since solid gold, the next day every company that even googled blockchain saw its stock drop.

This is typical boom-bust behaviour for any new type of commodities. It happened with the internet, it happened with railroads, and now it’s happening with blockchain. Things usually calm down after a while, though.

As more people ruch in to make money, different firms need to differentiate themselves from one another. One way to do so is to market your blockchain as a revolution for different industries.

So far I’ve seen people marketing cryptos to fix issues in social media, the internet of things, social media, journalism, law enforcement, and many others. Some of them had white papers over 60 pages long, while one white paper was a 3 minute read here on Medium.

It can be hard to tell whether or not a crypto is going to thrive, but the quality of a company’s white paper is one of the big things I look at. The three-minute read whitepaper did not make me confident in the success of that particular crypto.

Until the speculative frenzy dies down and the networks stabilize, it would be unwise to restructure society around blockchain.

That being said, blockchain is a revolutionary technology, and it would benefit anyone to invest in the right ones. I see IOTA and Etherium being two of the most successful in the long-term.

DISCLAIMER: Don’t take financial advice from me, because I’m just some guy with a journalism degree. But if you’re the type to make financial decisions based on hearsay from strangers, then go crazy and invest as much as you want to.

Bitcoin might remain the standard cryptocurrency in the future, but I think it also might just pop within the next year and fade into distant memory.

We’ll see what happens though.

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What if everything ran on blockchain? was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Go after your goals and don’t let anything get in your way.

There are many inspirational examples of people whose determination eventually led them to success, but I look to a different role model.

My cat.

Last May, my roommates took in a kitten they found on the street near our apartment.

He was tiny, scared, and malnourished when they found him, but Leonard has grown a strong spirit over the past few months.

He’s kind of a weird cat, and he has one persistent habit that annoys us every day: he will find and steal your food no matter what.

It doesn’t matter what you’re eating, where you are, or when he last ate.

I’ve even seen him grab a whole meatball out of someone’s pasta and run across the house with it.

His hunger is so great that he will go to any length just to get a taste of whatever’s nearby.

He’ll jump anywhere he has to and brave any danger. Any time an obstacle gets in his way, he eventually finds a way around it(usually after fifty or so tries.)

I think it’s because he’s in permanent survival mode after his time on the street.

Maybe he’s just naturally determined, though.

Whatever the reason, the second you turn your back on a plate of food Leonard will try to steal a bite or two.

Sometimes our backs don’t even have to be turned.

He’ll walk right up, look you in the eye, and take what he wants.

I’ve tried everything to get him to be stop.

No matter how many times I push him off the table, shut him away from where we eat, scold him, try to reason with him, or pray for deliverance, he keeps coming back to eat my food.

No obstacle ever deters him.

I know its kind of silly to project complex personality traits on to a cat, but I see the same sort of primal drive in him that seems to pull many entrepreneurs toward their goals.

Now that he’s getting bigger and healthier, he’s taking his drive to whole new levels.

Even though he’s made the simple act of eating lunch an ordeal, I still admire Leonard’s determined spirit.

He has a clearly defined goal — get food — and he will work to fulfill that goal every day no matter what happens.

If I applied that same persistence to everything I do I would probably be more successful.

The ability to go for your goals regardless of how many past failures you may have had is useful for anyone.

We can all probably learn from Leonard.

Thanks for reading! Clap if you’ve got an inspirational animal friend in your life.

As always, you can find me on twitter @JeremyCummings3 or on instagram @so.tall.im.in.space.

I’ll be going live with a website soon, so look out for that!

I’ve noticed a significant number of articles on Medium about flat design.

Its the overwhelmingly popular aesthetic for app icons and interfaces. Its everywhere you would usually go on the internet. ‘Many people define it as more of an ethos than an aesthetic even.

There doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to stick with flat design other than the fact that everyone is doing it, though.

I agree with Damien Madray that flat design is nothing more than a step forward in design history. Design is a series of tests and hypotheses. We‘re currently living through a large-scale test of how flat design actually works.

It’s difficult to challenge the appearance of other popular apps and expect consumers to get on board with your product. Flat design is great for the time being while our lives revolve around our flat phone screens.

This will all change, however, with the oncoming wave of new technologies.

AR and VR are going to redefine the field of UX/UI design, however. There’s no reason to be stuck designing flat in a 3D space. Skeumorphism was a cool design movement, and I think it will be applied widely in these emerging fields.

Particularly with AR, objects with a sense of belonging in the physical space will be easier for users to navigate.

Or perhaps UX design in these emerging fields will go the same way that design did for phone screens. Originally apps were designed primarily to imitate their physical analogues. Once we were used to smart phones, though, designers started to abstract their forms, eventually doing away with imitations of the physical world.

AR/VR might start off bound to skeumorphism and then translate into yet unexplored territories of interactive design. We won’t know what’s best for these technologies until far down the line when we’ve all ditched our smart phones for fancy new headsets though.

UX design is already changing to adapt to these new technologies. There is a variety of web resources available now for designers to consider while moving forward with new projects.

It’s an exciting time for technology and I can’t think of a more interesting place to be than in a VR company’s design department.

As always, thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this let me know by hitting that applause button or leaving your thoughts in the comments.

If you want to stay up to date on what’s happening in my life, please follow me on Twitter @jeremycummings3 or on Instagram @so.tall.im.in.space.

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Flat design isn’t the best. It’s just the best we have was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Everyone knows that consuming large amounts of junk food is bad for your health. What about junk media?

There are countless articles about our tendency to obsessively consume media and the various ways media companies exploit it. Facebook, Google, and countless other corporations have a vested interest in keeping us hooked to our screens mindlessly consuming whatever content they push through our feeds.

In the United States alone the entertainment and media industry was worth 573.57 billion U.S. dollars in 2014 and is expected to grow to over 720 billion U.S. dollars by 2020, according to Statista. That’s huge.

Whether it’s news, Instagram posts, vlogs, Youtube videos, or podcasts, there is a startling abundance of content out there for us to consume. There are also people who profit greatly from us consuming that content in an addictive fashion.

This is very bad.

There are many risks to consuming online content in a mindless, uncritical fashion. We might unknowingly spread propaganda placed by foreign actors. We might read numerous articles that contribute to our depression and negative self-image. We might procrastinate or neglect important parts of our lives under the facade of staying informed.

Also, when you ingest more content online you inevitably expose yourself to more advertising, which adds to mental cutter. Advertising is quite literally mind control. The more you expose yourself to, the less in control of your thoughts you are.

In my experience, reducing my consumption of media had significant benefits to my mood, productivity, and overall well-being. I believe everyone can benefit from a healthier information diet. In order to share my experience in changing mine and the tools I’ve used to do so, let’s go back in time to 2016.

I treat digital content the same way I treat food: don’t eat too much and only eat the right kind

Throughout the 2016 presidential primaries and for a few months after the election I was a hardcore news junky. I spent at least two hours each night watching TYT, reading Politico, and even sometimes descending into the pits of Breitbart and Infowars just to keep my news diet more “balanced.” (I’m not proud of this but it’s the truth.) Whenever I needed a break from hard news I would watch The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight to lighten the mood a bit.

Needless to say, this made me confused, overwhelmed, and a little bit neurotic. I could spout off analysis about even the most minor issues and conflicts. I wore my political awareness as a badge of honor.

I was unhappy, though. My life was dominated by political events. It was all I could think about because I spent too much time trying to keep up with what powerful people were doing. My efforts to have a varied stockpile of ideas and opinions led me to eventually burn out completely from the news. You might call it a content overdose.

This February I went almost the entire month without reading any news. Some days I wouldn’t even go on Twitter or Medium because reading or watching anything would inevitably end with me plummeting down the rabbit hole.

It was just about the happiest month of my life.

Detoxing from the news created an unintended shift from being dominated by external events, thoughts, and opinions, to me feeling an enhanced sense of control over my life.

The ideas in the content you consume become the content of your thoughts. If you consume junk content then you will have junk thoughts. Before, my thoughts were dominated by news because I spent so much time filling my brain with it. Changing my content consumption habits fundamentally changed my thought processes.

Lately I’ve been tuning back into the news. I’m much better at moderating what I consume, though, and I rarely spend more than 30 minutes throughout the day reading or watching news.

The best technique I’ve devised for maintaining a healthy information diet is to treat digital content the same way I treat food: don’t eat too much and only eat the right kind.

When I stopped snacking excessively and shifted to a more plant-based diet my physical health improved. Similarly, when I stopped excessively consuming content and only engaged with quality life-enriching content, my metal health improved.

Social media is the main source of information for many people. As the world is increasingly digitized and younger generations grow up in the highly-connected world, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and the other media giants are the new gatekeepers of the media we consume.

The problem with social media is that, as technologists like Tristan Harris have pointed out, the platforms we use have been carefully crafted to capture and manipulate our attention in order to maximize their profits. This extends beyond social media apps themselves to the design and basic functionality of our devices.

Most people don’t think about this because they are too busy liking and sharing posts on Facebook. Tech companies exploit our fundamental psychology for their personal economic benefit with no regard for how they effect our lives.

This is why, in addition to generally cutting down on my media consumption, I’ve developed some tricks specifically for limiting my exposure to detrimental content on social media:

1. Consumption caps — when I go on Twitter or Instagram I limit myself to 15 or 5 posts, respectively. I don’t count ads or sponsored content in this. Regardless of what I see, this satisfies my compulsive media cravings and prevents these apps from eating up too much of my day.
2. Follow purges — On a monthly basis I look at the list of accounts I follow on social media and purge garbage from the list. This gives me more control over what appears in my feed. It also feels very liberating, almost like I’m casting off dead weight.
3. Quiet times — I don’t go on social media for the first hour of the day or while I’m eating. This allows me to start each day on my own terms and truly enjoy my meals. This is especially important when I’m eating with friends and family.

These techniques have not only allowed me to be more productive. I’ve also been able to spend more time nurturing meaningful relationships. Strangely enough, as I’ve reduced my use of social media my social life has vastly improved.

This is because most of my connections on social media have little to no presence in my day-to-day life. I can easily reach all of the people who matter to me via texting or the Facebook messenger app that allows me to bypass the newsfeed. I’m not antisocial, I just believe strongly in the value of carefully curating the people with whom you spend your time.

Some people can maintain a healthy social life on social media. If you’re one of those people, keep doing your thing. I’m not one of those people. Twitter’s usefulness for me is mostly in promoting my writing. Facebook is most useful for me as a contact manager for its messenger function. Instagram can sometimes be a source of creative inspiration, but it’s usually just a black hole for productivity.

The problem of junk media goes far beyond technological manipulation. As long as people can benefit economically from pushing junk content through your newsfeed they will.

As a struggling freelance writer I’ve come across countless jobs to produce trash content for websites that only want ad revenue. They could give a damn whether or not you actually enjoy or benefit from what they’re publishing. The same goes for videographers and graphic designers.

As long as we keep clicking the content they will keep producing it.

If we all change our media diets, the market will have no choice but to change with us. We can not only help ourselves, but change the entire world if we just become a little more conscious about what content we consume and how we consume it.

As always, thanks for reading. A little applause goes a long way in telling me whether or not I’m writing what you want to read 😉

I’d like to shout out Pexels.com for providing free beautiful stock photos. I can almost always find what I’m looking for on there, and as a mostly unemployed writer, I appreciate them offering such a great service for free.

If you want to stay up to date on what’s happening in my life, please follow me on Twitter @jeremycummings3 or on Instagram @so.tall.im.in.space. Now turn off your smartphone/computer and go enjoy the weekend!