There's a friend of mine Tracey who is a little bit obsessed with collecting photographs of things that look like faces. We humans are subject to a phenomenon called pareidolia which means that if we spot the basic topography of eyes, noise and mouth then or brains fill in the gaps and say "Ooh, it's … Continue reading The rise of the anthropomorphs
Category: Technology
Sad news yesterday that Stephen Fry has had enough of the trolling and vitriol that he experiences on Twitter. I've no doubt that for celebrities with large followerships, the bile must be overwhelming. Given Fry's great openness about his own mental health challenges, one can imagine that the social networks, and Twitter in particular, are … Continue reading Failing the Turing Test
There was a short exchange between a Twitter account run by the CBI and Minister for the Digitals Matt Hancock MP last week that in less than 280 characters summed up my concerns for what appears to be currently going on in the UK government: https://twitter.com/MattHancockMP/status/697811253385895937 Now I know that it's probably unfair and unkind … Continue reading Technoration
One of my favourite concepts from my years of studying sociology back in the 1990s was one from the quite frankly partially-hatstand French Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard. There was one book in particular (his 1988 "America") where he talked about how the images that we see on through the windows of a car could, in fact, as … Continue reading A Turing test for VR
I've spent the last couple of days mostly in the wonderful Names Not Numbers event in London, a festival of eclecticism that was timely given my recent thinking about the importance of diversity of thought. The final session I was able to attend yesterday was a debate about the impact of emergent technologies, and particularly the … Continue reading Technology doesn’t shape the future
"Paradigm shift" is a much overused phrase, coined originally by the philosopher Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn argued that far from being a series of linear progressions, the body of scientific thought tended to move in abrupt leaps - paradigm shifts. At times of a new paradigm emerging, established wisdom tends to double-down on the existing models … Continue reading A perfect storm
Worried about your business being "Uberized"? Concerned that your services need to get more like AirBnB? Well, hope you've got deep pockets... There is a pernicious meme that is well established in business that relates that the Internet is basically free. In turn, it relates that technology using the Internet (and mobile too these days) … Continue reading Digital poster children
Here's an interesting paradox: teams that include people with greater diversity of background (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, language, academic level, academic subjects...) are likely to have greater diversity of thinking. Greater diversity of thinking is likely to lead to better decision-making, because if the people making the decisions come at things from multiple perspectives they'll … Continue reading Diversity of thought
It used to be that information technology trends started in business and then moved into the consumer space. "Enterprise" edition meant the full-fat, no expense spared version, "consumer" the lite, hobbled, crappy version. And then it all changed. To my mind, starting around 15 years ago as home broadband started to become available, then wireless and … Continue reading The inexorable shift
There are a couple of articles that have sprung up in the business press in recent weeks that have highlighted challenges with collaboration within organizations that have piqued my interest given my current work with #sharingorg. The first, the cover article in the January/February Harvard Business Review, talks about problems of collaborative overload. Specifically, authors Rob Cross, Reb Rebele … Continue reading The wrong tools for the job
mmitII 