If there’s one person who I feel really said the things that need to be said in 2015, it was Maciej Cegłowski. He gave a number of talks last year, and posted transcripts of them so that we can all read them and get smarter. The theme is common across all of them – that preserving a Web we can be optimistic about is going to take work and directed effort.

Here are the three talks from last year:

  • The Website Obesity Crisis – why Web pages have gotten so huge, and why slow download speed isn’t the only reason this is a problem
  • Haunted By Data – why collecting tons of data about your users’ activities and storing it forever is a bad idea
  • What Happens Next Will Amaze You – privacy and corporate surveillance on the Web
  • Special bonus: Web Design: The First 100 Years – this one is actually from 2014, but don’t miss it. “What if instead of dreaming about changing the world with tomorrow’s technology, we used today’s technology and let the world change us?” Sounds pretty great.

Working “in the industry” these are the oftentimes unacknowledged challenges we face every day – it’s easy to discount the total impact of the decisions we make about how to build Web pages, or how long we retain behavioral data, or what kinds of advertising we choose to purchase. I’m glad somebody brought it up.