Back in the early days of my career, deciding to do something new with information technology was an expensive business. Before you did anything, you needed hardware; servers to run things on, and software to run on those servers. The things you required arrived in boxes, even the software in the form back then of … Continue reading Technology as transport
Category: Technology
On a reasonably regular basis, I get asked to speak at events. I mean, I'm not deluged with offers. And none of them pays me. But it's nice to be wanted. However, requests in the last few months go something like this: Me: Thanks ever so. I'd really like to take part. Full disclosure, though. … Continue reading Crossing the divide
A few weeks ago I posted something vaguely witty on Twitter. This is such a regular occurrence that I can't even remember what it was. It was probably funnier in my head than it was on screen. But some people responded to it. Some Likes. Some Retweets. These aren't important to me (of course they … Continue reading Forget about the bloody water cooler
The buy versus build debate is one of the constants in the tech industry. Should you get a product off the (virtual) shelf, or invest in developing something bespoke to your needs? I was recently asked my views on the question, and thought it worthwhile to note where my head is currently at on the … Continue reading Buy versus Build
It struck me last week that organisations claiming to be “data driven” might as well describe themselves as “electricity driven”. Whilst on the face of it a data driven moniker might express some sort of rational futurism in the culture of an organisation, it doesn’t really, ultimately, say anything at all. I think implicit within … Continue reading Data driven?
Do you remember when the fax machine ended? No? No, neither do I. I remember having to scrabble around with a PC that still had a modem in it back in around 2011 to send a fax as part of a mortgage application. I remember around the same time receiving someone else's details in a … Continue reading The end of phone
The history of industrialization is a history of finding scale. Automation of processes so that capital investment in machinery could lead to increased productivity that would, in turn, deliver a return on the capital investment through cheaper to produce, better quality, higher volume goods. The "build it for the exit" model of digital business has … Continue reading Minimum Viable Volume
The idea of organic and synthetic data came up again today. I came up with a new metaphor to explain it... Back when I started taking digital photos back in 2002 (nearly 20 years -sheesh!), the cameras that I used would record a fair bit of metadata about the image when it was taken. The … Continue reading Organic and synthetic data
I had a fascinating conversation with one of our non-Exec directors this morning about life in general, and for a point about AI in particular. He by day is the CFO of a travel business, a world that has become consumed by sophisticated pricing algorithms in the last 20 years. As he pointed out, though, … Continue reading When the past can’t predict the future
I'm the sort of person who has favourite Laws of Social Science. Don't judge me. The two "Laws" (let's be honest, they're rules of thumb) are Goodhart's Law and Campbell's Law. The first, Goodhart's Law, is best described in paraphrase from Marilyn Strathem:When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. … Continue reading Goodhart, Campbell and Elections
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