Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. (Peter Drucker) Professor Dame Wendy Hall often recalls the early discussions around the formation of Web Science and Tim Berners-Lee’s suggestion that it be called PsychoHistory. For […]
Philosophising about the future of humanity is a very popular activity at the moment as is the current rhetoric around the future of work, AI domination and what humans could potentially become. But amongst all of this there has been very little real debate about what we, as humans, actually want our futures to be, […]
When everyone agrees on where the future is headed – especially when that destination is so far from our current reality – that’s not a sign of inevitability; it’s a sign that people have stopped thinking. A good time, perhaps, to hike out to some awkward, sideways headland where we can look things over from […]
Not long ago I was walking over the entrance to Narrabeen Lakes and I saw this fellow swimming against the tide. I had been talking to my friend about getting an endless pool and all of a sudden here was nature’s version. Over the past few posts I have been thinking about the words we […]
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 Practice, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Next week I will facilitate the first of our UK Digital Director workshops which will support the work being done as a part of NPC’s Digital Transformation programme. Over the past few months I have facilitated a number of pilot workshops for senior managers and directors of public sector organisations in Australia, and 2016 sees […]
Facebook isn’t a charity. The poor will pay by surrendering their data. In these few words Evgeny Morozov gets to heart of the digital transformation that is currently disrupting all value chains within the world as we know it. We are all now “paying” with our data. Scientifically, information is a choice—a yes-or-no choice. In a […]
Douglas Adams gave this wise counsel to Hitchhikers as they travelled around the Galaxy, and I would give the same advice to all those who are waking up to the need for “digital skills” in the modern economy and wondering what to do about it. Over the last few weeks I have attended a number […]
