Who represents the human in the digital age?
A version of this was written for NPC’s “State of the Sector” report. What do we mean by “digital”? In his book The Code Economy [1] Philip E. Auerswald talks about the long history of humans developing code as a mechanism by which to create and regulate activities and markets. We have Codes of […]
Were we “brave” @braveconvos #braveconversations ?
(Image source Flikr) Fortune favours the prepared mind. (Louis Pasteur) They say it also favours the brave. I have never been what I consider a risk-taker, nor considered myself particularly brave. But I do know that when my spider-sense tells me something I should listen. This is what has guided me in all that […]
Being brave
Last week in an article in the Financial Review renown businessman David Gonski talked about the commoditisation of the professions. Let’s be professional and fight artificial intelligence. (David Gonski) Gonski is right on a number of fronts, but very wrong on others. He is totally right in that the humans in the workplace need […]
#braveconversations – we need to talk!
www.braveconversations.org Web Science is becoming increasingly important. As JP Rangaswami writes in one of his recent blog posts We need to get better at studying the impact of change over time. Proper, longitudinal study, collecting and preserving the right data sets, with the relevant discipline and safeguards in place. That’s why I have been fascinated […]
Intersticia Manifesto – a continuous work in progress
Our focus is to help people develop analogue leadership in a digital world Context Over the past three years our Intersticia Foundation has been slowly identifying and supporting a diverse group of people as they pursue their chosen endeavours, whether this be through formal academic study, play-writing at Bell Shakespeare, leadership courses or film-making. We […]
Sleepers! Awake!
This is the first photo taken of the Earth from space in 1947. It gave humans a new view of their world which Carl Sagan described as a pale blue dot in the Universe. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human […]
We’re all being transformed, whether we like it or not …
Last week Web Science celebrated its tenth birthday. This week the UK’s Government Digital Service celebrated it’s fifth birthday and it’s story of those five years. These two milestones are important for the Web, as both organisations have only just begun the crucial work they were created to do, one creating the Government Social Machine […]
The future-readiness of Philanthropy
Last week I attended Philanthropy Australia’s 2016 National Conference in Sydney and CEO Sarah Davies opened the conversation with this quote from Victor Frankl. It resonated for me immediately because it highlighted two important elements of philanthropy. Firstly, the potential that lies in the interstice (the space between), where things are ill-defined, and Secondly, the […]
And now for the really fun part … Ethics and the Web
This week the Web Science Institute hosted it’s first Ethics Symposium. The event drew together a wonderfully diverse audience who were treated to with two excellent presentations from Woodrow Hartzog and Mireille Hildebrandt plus a vigorous panel discussion moderated by Thanassis Tirpoanis. Over the past six months Thanassis, Caroline Wilson, Leanne Fry and I have […]
Living in interesting times
There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen. (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin) I will say at the outset that I had no say in BrExit. I am neither a UK citizen nor resident, but I am a proud member of the British diaspora, and have benefited from being […]