And so after a fortnight in flip-flops, it's back to work. A few observations... It's increasingly disconcerting to live in a world without high-speed Internet. The villa where were spent our holiday had broadband glitches for some of the time we were there, and it really brought home how much we rely on reliable connectivity. … Continue reading The remarkably unglobal Internet
Category: Themes
It's all change in Government technology circles. The various changes that have happened at the top of the Government Digital Service and elsewhere in recent days signify something, although I'm not entirely sure what. Derek du Preez makes a good stab of it here. All this change got me thinking. For a while now I've been … Continue reading Change leadership
After last week's tinkering with making an interactive digital world out of reality, this week I've had a bit of time looking at how to create 3D models that can be viewed using a Virtual Reality headset. To start off, I've got three potential target VR environments. The cheapest is the Google Cardboard viewer, a … Continue reading Further adventures in VR Land
360 degree photography is a thing these days. Increasingly you'll see photos on places like Facebook that enable you to pan and zoom around to explore. You can then combine these spherical photos to create clickable "walkthroughs". It's even then possible to view these walkthroughs in a 3D Virtual Reality headset like Google Cardboard or … Continue reading Creating immersive walkthroughs
It's a question I'm being asked a fair bit at the moment and for the legal-minded folk I'm working with a great deal at the moment, this is how I respond... Machine Learning is really interesting. It's being applied to all sorts of problems where traditional models of programming have fallen short. It's mostly based … Continue reading Where can I use machine learning?
There's a lot of hype in the world at the moment about how algorithms are taking over the world. "Algorithms" is a posh word for equations. There's a lot of hype in the world at the moment about how machine learning is taking over the world. "Machine learning" is one of those things that is … Continue reading Algorithms my arse
Throughout my career it's struck me that technology has provided two forms of service: the dull stuff and the fun stuff. The dull stuff are the information systems, the databases, the business process automations. Generally the things that treat humans as little more than data and processing modules from whom information is to be extracted … Continue reading The art of play
It's been a funny day. I'm not sure what to think. As I wrote recently, I regard myself as a Londoner and a European. This morning it felt as if a part of my identity was removed from me. Things will work out. They always do. But it doesn't feel to be a world that … Continue reading Weeknote 294: bereft
Imagine the scenarios: The first, an errant piece of paper gets caught on a paperclip at the back of a bundle of documents. The documents are a contract to be signed as part of a negotiation. The errant piece of paper shows some workings that make parts of the deal transparent. The deal, as a … Continue reading Irreversible mistakes
A debate at this week's wonderful Names Not Numbers event has crystallised something that has been bouncing around my head for a while. I'm done with the idea of industry-specific software platforms. Here's why: 1. Platforms automate out humanity Part of yesterday's debate was agreeing where the boundaries of machine and human lie in our … Continue reading I’m done with the platform economy
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