I’m really proud to be featured in Sublime’s newsletter this week! If anyone is curious for some of my longer-form answers with more of my thoughts, I’ve put them below.

You said you taught yourself to read at three. Do you remember the first books you loved? What helped you become such an avid reader? 

I was very interested in the US Presidents as a two- and three-year-old and looking at a placemat of the Presidents' names and their pictures helped me connect the sounds to the letters. Once I could read, I began reading books about the Presidents, and some of those are probably the first books I loved. As for becoming an avid reader, I didn't really have other sources of entertainment. I didn't have television, or any sort of device, so a lot of what I did was reading. I think it was a very good decision by my parents not to expose me to YouTube or Roblox or other similar things. I would not have begun using the Internet as early as I did (seven) had the pandemic not forced me to do school on Zoom. I think it's a real mistake on my school's part to have so much of the day spent online and require each student to bring a personal computer, because if I wasn't already using the computer for school, I don't think that I would be on it really at all. While that would mean that I wouldn't have the opportunity to reach out to people and grow an audience via my blog, I don't think it's good if my school is the one encouraging Internet usage. 

You’re mostly off social media, apart from the type community on Mastodon. Is that your choice, your parents’ rule, or a bit of both?

I think it's a bit of both. I also think I should clarify that my usage of Mastodon is pretty much just for my type design interview project, and it helps me sort of understand the overall sentiment of type designers and just stay relatively up-to-date about the field. I definitely don't want to be like some other kids who spend all day on YouTube or TikTok, but also, even if I did, my parents wouldn't allow that anyway. It's the same way I feel about not wanting a phone.

When I asked you what advice you would give parents to help them raise self-motivated, tech-empowered children you said: “I think it's really a mindset shift. You really need to make sure your kids feel the same way about technology as you do.” What did you mean by that?''

When parents have issues with their kids' technology use, it's usually because their children are doing something that the parents don't want them to do, for example, watch TikTok videos. Likely, the kid's friends were watching TikTok videos, and the child didn't want to miss out. While this doesn't inherently mean the child in question lacks self-control entirely, the pressure they feel from their peers to watch the videos outweighs the pressure from their parents to avoid them. When kids' views align with their parents', their kids might not feel as much pressure from their peers to do things that their parents don't want them to do. I'm pretty anti-peer pressure, which is why I don't have a phone and am not on social media. Luckily, my parents and I feel the same way about technology, so it's not that big of an issue for me personally. I do see the conflict play out among my classmates, though.

You mentioned kids citing “Google” instead of the original sources. If you were the CEO of Google, how would you have approached the challenge AI presents to them, where people increasingly want answers, not a list of links.

I would have made them two separate interfaces. In my view, people who want Web results want Web results. They don't want to have to scroll through an AI summary to get to them. The same goes for people who want an AI summary -- they don't want a page of search results cluttering up their screen. I think there should be a little toggle in the corner, that you can set for all searches, but that can also be overridden on a case-by-case basis. For the people who started using Google because it provided links so well, they're going to feel betrayed if it starts showing more than just links. I think it would also be better if there wasn't both the low-quality "AI Overview" as well as the better "AI Mode," and there was just the button for AI Mode instead of the Overview as well. I've personally noticed dozens of typos and irrationally repeated words in the AI Overviews (as well as in AI Mode, but more seldom), so they're not even that useful! Though, I suppose, if I were the CEO of Google, the board would not be happy if I prioritized users :)

What do adults worry about with technology that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you? Alternatively, what’s something adults do online that makes you think, “They don’t get it”?

Even adults who are open to adopting technology and are pretty good at using it are still more resistant than I am to try a new way of doing something or changing settings. I've noticed that even my parents, who do much of their jobs on the computer, aren't very eager to change something they're used to. My dad is afraid of doing anything relating to our printer. A couple of years ago, we got a used HP printer off of Facebook, and it worked when we first tested it with a wired connection. We connected it to WiFi, and the next morning, it bricked itself, and would only work if we got a monthly HP Instant Ink subscription. After we got a different one (still an HP printer but not subscription-compatible), my dad was too scared to connect it to WiFi, and is still a little nervous every time he puts paper in. I am a bit less cautious with technology in general, not because I'm reckless, but because I feel more confident about what I can do. Because I was surrounded by these objects for my whole life, and am pretty good at figuring out things I don't know how to do, I don't have the same reluctance to try new things, and actually embrace things like changing my email program or web browser every so often. 

When you picture the internet ten years from now, what do you hope will be different?

Honestly, I hope we could restart ten years from now. If we deleted everything currently on the Web, and started anew, I think a lot of good would come out of that. One, it would give us (the world) the chance to rebuild, learn from the mistakes of the past few decades (JavaScript?), figure out what's actually worth doing again or recreating (Wikipedia?), and what everyone would be better without (SEO spam?). It's like starting fresh instead of copying all of your files over when you get a new computer. Two, I think it would bring us back to a version of the "Old Web" from decades ago, where everything was a lot simpler (as someone not alive then, I don't think I'm the best person to ask for more specifics). Three, with all due respect, reading an article from a month ago is more engaging than one from fifteen years ago in my opinion (especially for timely topics). Does anyone really need to know the 10-day precipitation forecast for April 2009?

Do you know what Yahoo is? What comes to mind when you hear the name?

I know what Yahoo is. I have used it a couple of times, and never found it superior to Google in any way. I think of it as a household name that passed its prime, and as an ad-invested platform that is not very useful. I had to use it for a little while when my school unintentionally blocked Google (their system is not the greatest), but not really otherwise.

What was the last question you asked an AI tool (Yahoo Scout, Claude, ChatGPT)? 

I asked Claude for some help planning a family Scandinavia trip for next summer. AI is useful for helping you narrow down your ideas sometimes, so I asked it for a list of the biggest cities in a certain region and used Claude to help me pick three cities that made sense as a coherent trip. In this context, I'm mostly using it to amplify my own thinking, and to bounce ideas off of, not to come up with original ideas. I landed on Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Malmo, which all seem very nice!

What topics are you most interested in right now? What are you reading?

Probably mostly tech, typography and food right now. A year or a year and a half ago, I was much more invested in the tech news and would try to make myself an expert in anything that was going on. That became a little much after some time (as well as getting repetitive), so I started reading fewer news stories, and focusing more on blog posts and opinion writing. I read The Verge, Daring Fireball, and Unsung daily, as well as periodically checking Hacker News. Interestingly, I've started to ignore a lot of the articles on The Verge, and instead read the comments for articles that intrigue me. I don't know why, but it's just so much more refreshing and grounding to hear normal people's (who may not work in tech) concerns and thoughts. 

Which blogs or newsletters do you always look forward to reading? 

I'm always looking forward to a new Daring Fireball or Unsung post. Because posts are not as frequent as they are on The Verge (where I know there'll be stories every day), and both represent one individual's opinions on tech and UI design, respectively, reading them is exciting. I don't have infinite time to read articles, so I use Daring Fireball as my daily or weekly roundup of what's going on along with John Gruber's perspective. Unsung, which is about "software craft and quality," has so much variety and diversity, so it serves as a "learn something new every day" kind of thing.

How do you discover something new to read, watch, or listen to? Can you give me a recent example?

For the most part, through linked recommendations. If a blog or a newsletter that I read recommends another publication, I'll usually check it out. Sometimes it's also a person who mentions it online -- for example, I just discovered Synonym Magazine from a post by Itay Dreyfus on Are.na. I haven't gotten to reading it yet, but it's about food and culture. Seems really interesting!