At this moment in time, I don't own a suit. The era of attending weddings has passed, second marriages in my circle of friends seem to be lower-key affairs, and I've not quite reached the age when people are popping off. Weddings, christenings, funerals... It's not something I think about a huge amount. I generally … Continue reading Suited and booted
Category: Themes
I saw a wonderful documentary last night about the conjuror and professional sceptic James Randi. After the first part of a career spent emulating and improving upon the work of Harry Houdini, Randi since the 70s has put much of his efforts into debunking fraudster faith healers and spiritualists (including waging a war on spoonbender … Continue reading Blind Faith
As I get older, I get increasingly to a functionalist position on the world around me. That the social structures and constructs that we see around us are there through a process of evolution and serve some sort of positive benefit because otherwise they would have fallen foul of natural selection. Sometimes this can seem … Continue reading Social evolution
I'm just back from a family trip to the remarkable Italian city of Venice. Former city state and global power, the web of islands and canals is now a powerful magnet for tourism. It's nearly fifteen years since I last visited. In many ways the city remains unchanged. The water taxis are still eye-wateringly expensive. … Continue reading Selfie Stick
My mobile phone is increasingly the most powerful data aggregation service in my life. It knows everything from my whereabouts to my where I should be abouts; it processes information about the world around me in audio and video; it pulls together my communications and my social networks; it gives me access to my business, my … Continue reading Hobson’s Choice
You have just been informed that aliens are coming. They will take over the Earth in 60 minutes. You are the only person on the planet who knows this information. You must tell the Prime Minister. But you must tell them in a way that means that they actually take some action. What do you … Continue reading The aliens are coming!
"So what's the difference between IT and Digital?" That's a heck of a googly to receive at the end of a 90 minutes workshop. (For American readers, a googly in cricket is what a curveball is in baseball, but we Brits don't play baseball. We play rounders. When we are seven.) Anyway, an interesting question, … Continue reading IT vs Digital
The world of homeopathy is an interesting thing. Pseudoscience cobbled together to produce medical interventions that are no more effective than a placebo, but have some sort of efficacy as a result of that effect. If you want to create a placebo effect, then you need to tell people a story to get them to … Continue reading Homeopathic IT
On Friday I was at a presentation given by one of the big IT vendors on the subject of Big Data and analytics. During the session the story was told of how US retailer Target had got so good with predictive analytics that they had infuriated the father of a teenage girl by sending her … Continue reading The legends of Big Data
I learned this week of the term Madtech. Marketing and advertising technology. It's good to see that cobbler's child syndrome is alive and well in the world; they might as well call it Sales, Hustling, Interrupting and Tracking Tech. Thing is, for all the talk about how smart marketing is becoming, driven by big data … Continue reading Retargeted
mmitII 