Tuesday 29 December 2020

Less is More

This post shares a title with a little article that a university classmate authored a couple of decades ago - back before blogging was a thing, so the platform that hosted it no longer exists - so you’ll just have to take my word for that.

The article was a comparison of two commonly used unix shell commands that are commonly used for viewing the content of a text file one page or buffer at a time.  The gist was that the “less” command offered greater functionality than the “more” command.

Evidently the same phrase also has a more widely known history for architecture and design being more impactful when there is less complexity or clutter.

People use social media for different purposes, and with different expectations of how to interact. One such example that I was not directly involved in, but found to be particularly strange, was when someone who holds himself up as a community leader became abusive because somebody had commented on their completely public post on Twitter, responding that it was as if he had been interrupted by a stranger while talking with his mates in a pub.

So, I should have known better than to chime in with “Less is more” on another individual’s tweet after having listened to a podcast that had included them as a guest.

Makes me wonder whether anybody that I have blocked on Twitter has taken it personally.  I very much doubt it.

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