On my holiday, I started reading into some topics I ought to know more about: artificial intelligence, genomics, healthcare, and the fast approaching intersection of the above. Here follow some half-baked reckons for your critical appraisal. Please tell me what’s worth digging into more. Also where I’m wrong and what I might be missing. 1. … Continue reading AI, black boxes, and designerly machines
This summer, after a lovely 2 week holiday in Tuscany, I returned to Leeds and straight into a classroom full of government senior leaders discussing agile and user-centred design. Their challenges set me thinking once more about the relationship between technology and social relations in the world of work. One well-known story from the Italy … Continue reading And yet it moves! Digital and self-organising teams with a little help from Galileo
Douglas Rushkoff nails my unease at the patenting of gestures, a critical front in the commercial war being waged through intellectual property. At stake is how far governments should grant monopoly rights over something that belongs to all of us: our shared language of words and gestures. US Patent #7,812,826, though limited and not at stake … Continue reading Apple’s real innovation: a gesture made with two fingers
"Si j'etais bien en fonds, j'achèterais une presse !" - French Revolutionary Camille Desmoulins The role of the printing press as transformational communication technology is a commonplace so powerful that it is frequently invoked as a parallel to the Internet. We think of it in terms of the spread of ideas, of bibles hitherto copied … Continue reading Rev. Dr. Priestley in the Library with the lead type
Last Wednesday's Ignite Leeds gave me a perfect excuse to reprise my talk, How to Get Ahead in Business the Boulton and Watt Way. As ever, I'm grateful to Imran Ali and Craig Smith of O'Reilly for making the event happen, and to the audience at the Rose Bowl for giving me five minutes of … Continue reading Watt versus Murray, some open questions
Cutting edge artists have always looked to advances in science for new materials and techniques. But where our innovations centre on digital media and information technology, the crossover science of the Victorian era was chemistry. We owe today's rich visual culture to the pioneers who mastered the interactions of chemicals, minerals, ceramics, celluloid and light. … Continue reading Finding Lizzie Le Prince
My 20 slides from Bettakultcha at Temple Works, Holbeck... ... on which more later, but meanwhile you can also read the original blogpost: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way.
About this time of year, this blog gets a peak in search hits for Thomas A Watson of "Mr Watson, come here. I want you" fame. Somewhere out there, I imagine, is a teacher who sets the same class assignment every year, and whose students flock obediently to Google in search of information and images. … Continue reading Thomas A Watson: An Apology
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
Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited as the next guy. I even bought the t-shirt. But listening to Norman Lewis' thought-provoking talk at TEDxLeeds, I worried that the narrative around the Moon landings is in danger of plunging us into a crater of dusty nostalgia, and doing down some of the amazing things that are … Continue reading We choose the Moon (without the moan)
Last month's Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology, was based on the insight that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. I was pleased to help meet that need in a very small way, with a short … Continue reading Why I took part in Ada Lovelace Day
If, as David Ogilvy said, diversity is the mother of invention then the technology media and telecoms sector is missing out on untold opportunities to innovate, stuffed as it is with people who look like me, white and male. I'm proud to work for a company that wants to change this. Today is Ada Lovelace … Continue reading “Embellish your Country with useful inventions & elegant productions”
It was a privilege to present at this week's GeekUp Leeds on a topic close to my heart, the amazing industrial heritage of Leeds and why it should be an inspiration to those working in the technology sectors today. Thanks to Deb and Rob for organising another great event, and to the GeekUp participants for putting … Continue reading The history of Leeds: What every geek should know
In the spirit of Chris Heathcote's excellent abstract pointillist powerpoint toolkit, I spent a couple of happy hours putting together 20 slides about Leeds, its industrial heritage and why I find it so inspiring. I was too late to submit to this week's Ignite UK North event (but thanks, Imran, for the kind tweet in any case), … Continue reading Abstract innovation
Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air sparks a delightful reverie on the pivotal role of 18th Century scientist, non-conformist minister and poltical thinker Joseph Priestley. Living in Leeds, I was vaguely aware of Priestley from local museums and the blue plaque at Mill Hill Unitarian Church on City Square. What schoolchild could fail to be … Continue reading Reflections on Reading of Mr Joseph Priestley and M Antoine Lavoisier While Travelling by Air Plane Between Leeds and Paris
Matt Edgar writes here 