I had a thoroughly enjoyable three days of hosting UX London this week and met such lovely people at the event—thank you to everyone who came!

Thursday session

The Session existed in a very basic form since the late 1990s. It was just me posting a different tune every week.

But The Session as it is today—a community website where everyone can add tunes—first went online on June 3rd, 2001. That’s 25 years ago today.

Considering the typical lifespan of a web page, I’m proud of having a website still online and thriving a quarter of a century after launching it.

At this point it’s fair to say that thesession.org is my life’s work. Though, really, I’m just the curator; the site would literally be nothing without all the contributions that people have made to it.

It’s been a great 25 years so far, and I’m looking forward to the next 25.

Tuesday session in London

What a slap in the face of every tech conference that claims it is simply not possible to have a truly representative line-up: multiple perspectives, multiple faces, multiple experiences, rather than the same default one we’ve all been staring at for decades (that’s a white middle aged man in case you’re wondering. I do love you, white middle aged man, but we’ve heard from you, and keep hearing from you. Time to hear from others, too).

Yes, my friend. It is possible. UX London has done it. The Clearleft team has done it. Go look for yourself.

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Simply put: AI thrives when our need for originality is low and our demand for mediocrity is high.

AI will fill the world with grindingly average texts, passable but derivative illustration and video, and unoriginal but functional new product designs.

What is being mechanized by AI is our tastes—our ability to discern quality (or originality) at all.

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Thursday session

I few weeks back, I got an email with the subject line, Screenshot in an Exhibition: I am currently developing an exhibition celebrating the thriving folk musics of these islands for the Royal College of Music Museum and one of the showcases looks at the Sharing of folk ...

Wednesday session

Signing in solidarity with Wiki Workers United:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWorkersUnited_solidarity#Signatures

1. Data is a risk.
2. Data is distracting.
3. It becomes a job.

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Monday session

Bhí me i Londain an deireadh seachtaine seo caite mar gheall ar an Gaeltacht cois Tamaise. Cúpla lá iontach ba ea iad! Bhí na ranganna ar siúl Dé Sathairn agus Dé Domhnaigh, ceithre huaire an chloig gach lá, i gColáiste na Rí. Bhí ceithre leibhéal ann—tosathóiri, meanleibhé...

Happy birthday, Star Wars, responsive design, and Douglas Adams!

Saturday session in London.

Londoning

At the Royal College of Music Museum, where the new exhibit features thesession.org!

Going to London. brb

Reading Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler.

Thursday session

I enjoyed Kim Curran’s debut novel, The Morrigan, so when I saw a copy of her brand new book in the local library, I snapped it up. Like The Morrigan, Brigid is modern retelling of Irish mythology, but in a very different time period. Whereas The Morrigan was set in a mythi...

Wednesday session

1993 shaped how I think of the internet, and I’m keepin’ on in that original spirit.

Like picking up trash where you walk, even if the rest of the world is full of litter. You keep doing what you can to make things better.

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We’ve seen this arc before, and music is the richest analogy.

Like Bruce Sterling always says:

Whatever happens to musicians happens to everybody.

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Sunday session

Is breá leat é a fheiceáil.

Last year Jeremy Keith blogged about completing Duolingo Irish, and I’ve added that as a goal for myself. I found myself in London with him in February at State of the Browser. It’s probably the last place you’d expect to hear Irish spoken, yet we had an earnest conversation over lunch, using as much as we could.

Having a proper conversation as Gaeilge with Paul was an absolute highlight for me!

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When I told you about the schedule for UX London 2026, I said: After your afternoon workshop there’ll be one final closing talk at the end of each day before we head to the bar. These closing talks are a way of bringing everyone back into the same space after spending ...

The browser is the security boundary. Websites operate within it. Native apps bypass it.

Like I said last year:

But there’s still one thing that native apps do better than the web. If you want to be able to monitor and track users to an invasive degree, the web can’t compete with the capabilities of native apps. That’s why you’ll see so many websites on your mobile device that implore to install their app from the app store.

This piece goes into the details:

Most native apps collect far more data than their website equivalents ever could. They request permissions to hardware, sensors, and background processes that browsers deliberately restrict. The third-party software embedded in these apps frequently transmits your location, device identifiers, and behavioral data to third parties before you even see a consent prompt.

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AI writing reminds me of Tennyson’s description of the beautiful Maud in the titular poem:

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null
Dead perfection; no more

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