There is a thought experiment that I picked up a year or so ago, and the origins are sadly forgotten. It goes a little something like this: You have found out that the world is in mortal danger. Aliens are coming. They land in 60 minutes. When they land, they will take over the planet … Continue reading The Rumsfeld Paradox
Category: Social
Somewhere in a parallel universe... When we first pitched for the job it felt, to a great extent, like just about any other public sector gig. It paid fine, but there were constraints that we had kind of got used to in how many boundaries we might be able to push. The pitching process was … Continue reading Pushing social boundaries
I had a great hour or so earlier this week listening to Rowland Manthorpe from Wired talking about the future of money at the inaugural The New Normal session. Rather than the a la mode of talking about distributed ledgers and crypto currencies, Rowland focused instead on data - at the core of his argument … Continue reading The future of money
I learned how to write 140 character tweets at the age of 16. I'm nearly 47. Let me explain... Back in the day in Watford, the funny little town in which I grew up, we used to have two local newspapers. The Evening Echo was published six times a week, including the exciting Saturday evening … Continue reading Sweating the small stuff
Out of idle curiosity yesterday I spent a bit of time asking the internet the question "What do I need to know to start exploring the world of Artificial Intelligence?" The answers that I received from those nice Mr Brin & Page's marvellous machine were illuminating. There was a lot about mathematics. Statistics in particular. … Continue reading A limited interpretation
Every so often a small yet simple idea from someone else gets lodged in my brain and changes the way I think about things. So it is with the concept from Sigmund Freud that crossed my path a few months ago: the narcissism of small differences. What Freud observed was that when groups of people … Continue reading Small differences
The theme of facial recognition appears to be in the news at the moment. Not only, though, from the introduction of Apple’s latest thousand pound fondle slab, but from news about a research project that has been using machine learning techniques reportedly to identify sexuality. Now first of all there is a lot of media … Continue reading All in the eyes
I'm currently reading Tim Harford's excellent new tome Fifty Things that made the Modern Economy. Based on his BBC Radio series, it charts ideas and objects that have created the world around us today. Some of them are obvious (the Light Bulb), some of them less so (the Billy Bookcase). In his description of the … Continue reading The middle of the journey
I've just re-read the book Remote: Office Not RequiredRemote: Office Not Required published a few years back by the founders of software company 37 Signals. A guide to good and bad experiences of remote working, it seemed timely given the project I'm just kicking off looking at how technology can enhance working practice in one of the … Continue reading Working remotely
The world has changed. We used to talk about the online world and the real world. There is no longer such a distinction. Our realities are a synthesis of things in the physical world, things in the digital realm and stuff in our heads. The biggest part, as it's ever been, is the stuff in … Continue reading Mixed reality
