Adoption not Creation

The federal government is all on on tech adoption not tech creation, according to ScoMo:

All of the digital transformation, it’s not an Everest we have to climb. We’re not just doing it because it’s there. We’re not trying to create the next Silicon Valley here in Australia. That’s not it,” Mr Morrison said.

We’ve just got to be the best at adopting. Taking it on board. Making it work for us. And we’re really good at that.

I can get behind the adoption not creation idea, but only if organisations spend enough time to know what they’re doing now and what they’re changing to.

October 22, 2020

The Promantic Era

we are living in the Promantic era. Much like the Romantics gave primacy to inspiration and individualism, the Promantic era elevates the professional self across the whole self. There is no longer a separation between professional development” and personal development.” All skills, experiences, and practices can be brought to bear on our professional and private lives. Who we are in work is who we are.

— Brian Dell in the latest issue of Little Futures

Why do I blog this?1

With work-from-home just becoming work this seems relevant. Also, as someone whose downtime is spent reading work related” things — a habit from years in academia — I feel seen.

Also (also) — subscribe to the newsletter I write in my spare time which is about things that are relevant to my work!


  1. Stealing this from Nicolas Nova’s old (?) practice so that this blog becomes slightly more than a collection of links.↩︎

September 17, 2020

What if technology but for people?

At the end of my reflections a few years back, I suggested that a humanist critique of technology entails a preference for technology that (1) operates at a human scale, (2) works toward human ends, (3) allows for the fullest possible flourishing of a person’s capabilities, (4) does not obfuscate moral responsibility, and (5) acknowledges and respects certain limits inherent to the human condition.

Michael Sacasas in his newsletter, The Convivial Society

September 8, 2020

Holly White: City Spaces, Human Places

July 16, 2020

A different forever situation

Rands:

Everyone desperately wants to return to normality. I am a professional optimist, but we are not returning to normal. Ever. This is a different forever situation, and the sooner we realize that and start to plan accordingly, the sooner we will feel unstuck.

June 22, 2020

Lock me in a room

I love a real-life meeting. There, I said it. They’re theater, and I’m a ham. You plan and prepare, you make a deck, you try to surprise. Meetings, well run, are alchemy; you can turn words and pictures into large checks or people agreeing to work for you, or convince a big company to do something it hates to do. An hour? Two hours? Stop crying. Lock me in a room for three days with a team of five strangers and a stack of sticky notes as high as your eye.

Paul Ford

June 2, 2020

Sarah Cooper’s Trump lip-syncs

James Poniewozik in the NYT:

This is another theme of her Trump, the insistent confidence betrayed by microexpressions of terror. From Ms. Cooper’s lips, the president’s sentences become plywood bridges he’s trying to nail together, one shaky plank at a time, over a vertiginous Looney Tunes canyon.

June 2, 2020

What analytics means

(In case bit-rot sets in: Anyone Not Likely To Interact With Customers)

May 23, 2020

Adjust now

This post by Matt Webb on how there is no after.

And that’s how I think about the lockdown now. A high tide that won’t go out. It’ll come and go, a bit, but really this period is just an extreme phase in what we’ll find is the new normal.

May 11, 2020

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