In part 1 of this update, I looked at what's changed for me at work over the past 6 months. In part 2, I shared what I've learned through my participation in the NHS Leadership Academy's Nye Bevan Programme. To round off these reflections, I'm thinking about what's next, with a nod back to the … Continue reading More serene: Two and a half years into my work at NHS Digital – part 3
It puzzles me that technology so easily becomes the dominant metaphor for explaining society, and not the other way round. "Self-organise like nanobots into the middle," exhorts dConstruct host Jeremy Keith as we assemble for the afternoon session at the Brighton Dome. We shuffle obligingly to make room for the latecomers, because everyone here accepts … Continue reading dConstruct 2013: “It’s the Future. Take it.”
As a child I hated Cubs. All that running around and shouting, the church parades, and camping on a damp field at the edge of Danbury Common. But in a twist of fate I find myself parent to three boys far more enthusiastic than I ever was; my oldest recently got a badge marking seven … Continue reading Keep the campfire burning: a thread of whimsy from Baden-Powell to Berners-Lee
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, opening line Why did Glasgow win the right to host the Technology Strategy Board’s £24 million Future Cities Demonstrator? Project Leader Scott Cain reels off a set of doom-laden statistics: a looming crisis in affordable warmth; … Continue reading At Future Everything: nobody likes a smart arse, even when it’s a city
This is the text of my presentation at the Leeds Digital Conference on 12 October 2012. If you like this, you may also like my TEDxLeeds 2010 talk, The Makers of Leeds. In 1763, the Corporation of London, wishing to make way for bigger boats on the Thames, ordered the removal of a central pier … Continue reading The future beneath our feet
And now for today's news from the Department of Serendipity. Quote Investigator digs diligently, delightfully and with positive results into the provenance of William Gibson's lumpily doled-out future|present. But the bit that stands out for me is Ralph Thomas' 1967 criticism of Marshall McLuhan... McLuhan suffers also from a mixed-up time sense. He believes the … Continue reading “That even space travel is now a reality”
In the corner of an attic room in one of Britain's oldest factories a small group are engaged in the assembly of a Makerbot Thing-O-Matic. They - it - all of us - are there for Laptops and Looms, a gathering of people whose crafts cross the warp of the digital networked world with the … Continue reading The Dissolution of the Factories, or Lines Composed a Few Days After Laptops and Looms
In my dayjob, mobile media, we spend a lot of time talking about platforms. Curiously we like to think of these platforms as eternally new and shiny. “Legacy” is is not a windfall from the preceding generation. It's a perjorative term. Sometimes we even set our old platforms on fire, which is strange, because, as … Continue reading The past is a platform from which we launch into the future*
Interesting North presentations by James Boardwell and Toby Barnes plus an all-too-short chat with Tom Armitage in the pub after the event prompted me to rescue this post from my blog's permanently-in-draft folder. I'm not sure it's finished yet, but make of it what you will. Originally it was going to be a sober and … Continue reading Aramis, or the Love of Pedalling
To my middle, most media-savvy son, the record player is the stuff of legend. Could a needle bouncing through wiggly grooves on a disc of black plastic truly recreate music as faithfully as the bits and bytes that play the part today? On a rainy July Saturday afternoon I stagger from the loft with my … Continue reading You’re in the future now, Konvergenz Boy
There's a common narrative pattern in which a protagonist is saddled with some differentiating characteristic - big ears for example, or scissors for hands, or flatulence. At first said characteristic causes the protagonist to be shunned by their peers, but in a different context it turns out to be an advantage, enabling them to overcome a … Continue reading We got everything we need right here
It's a pleasure to see - at risk of sounding like a Key Stage One Literacy Coordinator - that reading is hot right now. Amazon is starting to ship the Kindle DX worldwide Apple is apparently about to launch some kind of new device eReaders are predicted to be the hottest category at CES this … Continue reading Brought to book: some subtleties of social interaction
21/02/2009 Originally uploaded by mattedgar. Dear Lazyweb, Please make a product/service where: I pour large quantities of Lego into a hopper. The Lego is sorted by colour, shape and size into its original sets, as defined in a freely available online database of Lego set contents. Those sets are offered for sale on Ebay or … Continue reading Forward planning
Greetings from 2008! I'm really pleased you've picked the Early 21st Century Social History module this term. You're going to love it. But before you dive into the wealth of primary evidence we've left on the net, there's something we need you to understand. We know it doesn't look good, but we weren't really shallow … Continue reading Note to future historians: We know it doesn’t look good, but we weren’t really shallow time-wasters in the Noughties
Ten years ago I worked in a declining industry. Regional newspaper readerships were aging, as papers struggled to connect with their communities. Staff cuts and inflexible new technology at the paper I worked on meant we had a 9:30am press deadline for some localised editions - which rather made a mockery of the word "Evening" … Continue reading I have seen the future and it folds
Matt Edgar writes here 