As we enter into the final stages of the editorial processes for randomthebook.com, yesterday I found myself with a creative challenge. Each of the stories in the book will be illustrated with a pop art-style collage. I've been struggling to get into the task, so wanted to break it down into more manageable steps. In … Continue reading Disposable applications
Category: Technology
In last week’s WB-40, guest Rufus Evison drew an interesting analogy between how LLMs work and Daniel Kahneman’s Fast and Slow thinking model. Rufus described how LLM responses are “fast”, almost instinctive based on past experiences and pattern matching, and the problem with them is that they need to be more “slow”, deliberative and logical. … Continue reading The Messy Truth About “Thinking” Machines
(An experiment in stakeholder management, creativity and vibe coding) Some months ago, I came into the possession of a bag of 10 small rubber ducks. The reasons why are on a need-to-know basis, and you probably don't need to know. I thought about turning them into art. Originally, I was going to glue them to … Continue reading Ducks in a Row
I'll be turning 54 next month. I know, I barely look a day over 52. In my brain, however, I'm still waiting for the morning I wake up and feel like a grown-up. But despite my increasing years and abandoned hairline, I can't really remember a time in my life when I wasn't surrounded by … Continue reading The 4Cs of Computing
About the only idea from the world of Game Theory that I know that I know is a thought experiment called The Prisoner's Dilemma. It goes something like this: You've been arrested. Your accomplice has been arrested. You are both told that if you snitch on the other you'll be let free. If you are … Continue reading The Prisoner’s D-AI-lemma
For many years I've held true to a concept that goes as follows: You can exponentially scale transactions. You can change interactions into transactions and then exponentially scale those transactions, but you lose social and cultural meaning along the way. You cannot exponentially scale interactions. They only scale in a linear fashion. My go-to metaphor … Continue reading Simulating interactions
In Claire L Evans' wonderful book Broad Band: The untold story of the women who made the internet there is a particularly interesting observation about how a conference held in 1968 in the Bavarian ski resort of Garmisch had a huge impact on the gender bias in the computing industry. In the late 1960s there … Continue reading Prompt Midwives
There are a lot of duopolies in the world. Coke and Pepsi. Windows and Mac. Android and iOS. Labour and Conservative. When you have a duopoly it's really hard to get a new entrant in to break it. Remember Virgin Cola? Remember OS/2? Remember Windows Phone? Remember the Liberal Democrats? I was working at Microsoft … Continue reading Apple’s Duopoly Challenge
Over my nearly 30 years of work, I've picked up a bunch of theories and models along my way. Some of them are useful, many of them I've forgotten. One that I keep coming back to is the 7-S Model. Developed by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in the 1980s whilst they both worked at … Continue reading 7-Ss for Technology teams
Metaphors are powerful things. They are core to how we make sense of the world. Good metaphors are a great way to get ideas to transmit. Bad metaphors get in the way of understanding. In the last few months I've been thinking about the metaphor of "technical debt" and wondering increasingly if it is much … Continue reading Technical Credit Card
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