Thought Shrapnel

Albert Wenger, the only Venture Capitalist I pay any attention to, writes on his blog that… he misses writing on his blog. He talks about a couple of reasons for this, the first of which is the usual excuse of “being too busy”.

It’s the second reason that interests me, though, especially as I feel the same futility:

[T]he world is continuing to descend back into tribalism. And it has been exhausting trying to maintain a high rung approach to topics amid an onslaught of low rung bullshit. Whether it is Israel-Gaza, the Climate Crisis or Artificial Intelligence, the online dialog is dominated by the loudest voices. Words have been rendered devoid of meaning and reduced to pledges of allegiance to a tribe. I start reading what people are saying and often wind up feeling isolated and exhausted. I don’t belong to any of the tribes nor would I want to. But the effort required to maintain internally consistent and intellectually honest positions in such an environment is daunting. And it often seems futile.

Source: Continuations

Image: Timon Studler

This article focuses on research that reveals people who do ‘boundary work’ within organisations, that is to say, individuals who span different silos, are more likely to suffer burnout and exhibit negative social behaviours.

The researchers used “field data, surveys, and experiments involving more than 2,000 working adults across two countries” and found that there are three ways that organisations can reap the benefits of this boundary work while mitigating the downsides:

1. Strategically integrate cross-silo collaboration into formal roles (i.e. acknowledge their role as “cross-team, cross-function collaborator[s]")
2. Provide adequate resources (e.g. training programmes and tools for collaboration, but also reward and recognition)
3. Develop multifaceted check-in mechanisms and provide opportunities to disengage (i.e. gain feedback in multiple ways to gauge when boundary spanners need additional space and/or support)

While past research has documented many benefits of boundary-spanning, we suspected that individuals collaborating across silos may be faced with higher levels of cognitive and emotional demands, which could lead to higher levels of burnout. We also wanted to understand if the exhaustion and burnout they faced may lead to abusive behavior toward others.

[…]

Cross-silo collaboration is a double-edged sword in the modern workplace. While it undeniably serves as a catalyst for expedited coordination and innovation, it can adversely affect the well-being of those who engage in it. The good news is that organizations can adopt a multifaceted approach to support their boundary-spanning employees.

Source: Harvard Business Review

(non-paywalled version)

I came across this post yesterday in which I was interested primarily for the graphic. The author didn’t specifically acknowledge the source, but I found Joseph Voros' blog in which he explains how he came up with what he calls The Futures Cone:

The above descriptions are best considered not as rigidly-separate categories, but rather as nested sets or nested classes of futures, with the progression down through the list moving from the broadest towards more narrow classes, ultimately to a class of one — the ‘projected’. Thus, every future is a potential future, including those we cannot even imagine — these latter are outside the cone, in the ‘dark’ area, as it were. The cone metaphor can be likened to a spotlight or car headlight: bright in the centre and diffusing to darkness at the edge — a nice visual metaphor of the extent of our futures ‘vision’, so to speak. There is a key lesson to the listener when using this metaphor—just because we cannot imagine a future does not mean it cannot happen…

Source: The Voroscope

This article by Laura Killingbeck is definitely worth reading in its entirety. Not only is it extremely well-written, it gives a real-world example to a hypothetical internet discussion. Killingbeck is a long-term ‘bikepacker’ and therefore the “man or bear” question is one she grapples with on a regular basis.

The central reason why fewer women travel alone is our fear of male violence and sexual assault. Actually, the most common question I get about my travels is some version of, “Aren’t you afraid to bike/hike/travel alone as a woman?” By naming my gender, the implication is clear. What people really mean is, “Aren’t you afraid of men?”

This leads us straight back to the original conversation about “Man or Bear,” which has nothing to do with bears. (Sorry, bears!) “Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?” is just another way of asking, “Are you afraid of men?” It’s the same question I’ve been fielding for the entirety of my life as a solo female traveler. It’s the same question that hovers over women all the time as we move through the world.

And it’s a question that’s always been difficult for me to answer. I’m not afraid of all men. But I am afraid of some men. The real problem is the gray area in between and what it takes to manage the murkiness of that unknown.

Source: Bikepacking

Imagine how absolutely terrified of competition Google must be to be to put the output from the current crop of LLMs front-and-centre in their search engine, which dominates the market.

This post collates some of the examples of the ‘hallucinations’ that have been produced. Thankfully, AFAIK it’s only available in North America at the moment. It’s all fun and games, I guess, until someone seeking medical advice dies.

Also, this is how misinformation is likely to even worse - not necessarily by people being fed conspiracy theories through social media, but by being encouraged to use an LLM-powered search engine trained on them.

Google tested out AI overviews for months before releasing them nationwide last week, but clearly, that wasn’t enough time. The AI is hallucinating answers to several user queries, creating a less-than-trustworthy experience across Google’s flagship product. In the last week, Gizmodo received AI overviews from Google that reference glue-topped pizza and suggest Barack Obama was Muslim.

The hallucinations are concerning, but not entirely surprising. Like we’ve seen before with AI chatbots, this technology seems to confuse satire with journalism – several of the incorrect AI overviews we found seem to reference The Onion. The problem is that this AI offers an authoritative answer to millions of people who turn to Google Search daily to just look something up. Now, at least some of these people will be presented with hallucinated answers.

Source: Gizmodo

This looks promising! As with everything like this, though, the more data we capture about the body, the more we need robust privacy legislation and security protocols.

Also, I’m pretty sure this could be printed as a form of tattoo on the surface of the human skin, so it could be art as well as science.

Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of biological surfaces, whether that’s a finger or a flower petal.

The method, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, takes its inspiration from spider silk, which can conform and stick to a range of surfaces. These ‘spider silks’ also incorporate bioelectronics, so that different sensing capabilities can be added to the ‘web’.

The fibres, at least 50 times smaller than a human hair, are so lightweight that the researchers printed them directly onto the fluffy seedhead of a dandelion without collapsing its structure. When printed on human skin, the fibre sensors conform to the skin and expose the sweat pores, so the wearer doesn’t detect their presence. Tests of the fibres printed onto a human finger suggest they could be used as continuous health monitors.

[…]

The researchers say their devices could be used in applications from health monitoring and virtual reality, to precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. In future, other functional materials could be incorporated into this fibre printing method, to build integrated fibre sensors for augmenting the living systems with display, computation, and energy conversion functions.

Source: Research | University of Cambridge

One of the many things that I’ve learned from Laura is that people need things to do with their hands. That’s true with virtual workshops where emails are only a click away, but it’s also true in-person as well.

This post talks about this as an ‘ancient need’ which might explain stone knapping. The author, Matt Webb, suggests that we could lift this ‘evolutionary burden’ somewhat by, instead of teaching kids to better tolerate boredom, teach them a skill which involves using their hands. It’s not a bad idea, you know. I was giving kids blu-tack to fiddle with 15 years ago when I was a teacher, and not just the neurodivergent ones!

If I were to try something revolutionary, I mean truly revolutionary on a generational scale, here’s what it would be:

I would sneak a new fiddle urge fulfiller into the national school curriculum.

I wouldn’t plan on teaching kids how to tolerate boredom as they get older, or how to be more comfortable than previous generations inside their own heads. Those are unstable solutions.

I mean instead I would work to come up with something in the family of pen flipping or polyrhythm finger tapping or rolling a coin over the knuckles. Or I’d invent secular rosary beads or make child-safe whittling knives.

Something like that. Self-contained, not networked. Automatic, with room for skill, dextrous.

And I’d make sure this new skill was taught and drilled before these kids even have much conscious awareness, like right when they start pre-school, so it’s there for them throughout their lives.

Source: Matt Webb

Related: Museum of Stone Tools (which is where the image is from)

Although things are pretty quiet at the moment, I usually average around 20 hours of paid work per week. When I tell them, people seem surprised at this, but when you strip away the pointless meetings, bureaucracy, and frustration that can come with regular employment, it’s entirely possible to (in normal times) earn a decent salary working half the number of hours.

This article shares the case of Josh Epperson, who works 10-15 hours per week and earns ~$100k/year after starting what he calls ‘The Experiment’. On a side note, I’m also sharing the image that comes with the article to comment how lazy it is: who uses a briefcase in 2024? Also, as the article mentions explicitly, Epperson is spending the time he’s not working doing community stuff, not lazing on the beach.

For me, I spend a lot of time on the side of football pitches and basketball courts. I’m almost always around for my kids, because I work from home and try and get most of my work done while they’re at school. This, to my mind, is the way it should be. Apart from school, but that’s a whole other post…

Epperson began The Experiment by scaling back the obligations on his time and money. He resigned from his role on the board of a Black film festival. He moved out of his swanky apartment to a cheaper part of Richmond and traded in his Land Rover for a Honda CR-V. Despite these downgrades, his new path came with advantages. Epperson prepared his meals and ate more healthily. He spent unhurried afternoons with friends in the garden. And he got into regular meditation and exercise.

Epperson also saw how the added time benefited his professional life. He started working on projects for the Smithsonian and an urban-farming nonprofit called Happily Natural. With more space around his work, his work got better. “In the old industrial model of employment, the more hours you put in, the more products come out,” he explained. But if the product is an idea for a marketing campaign or a headline for a website, Epperson found that there wasn’t a positive correlation between how many hours he put in and the quality of the output. With more room to seek inspiration and develop his ideas, Epperson was doing more work that made him proud.

What impressed me most from my time with Epperson is that he doesn’t treat leisure only as grist for the mill. He doesn’t unplug so that he can be more productive when he sits back down at his computer. Nor does he, like so many of us, exist in a perpetual state of half-work, swiping down at dinner to see if any new emails have come in.

For Epperson, reducing his working hours gives him the space to invest in other facets of his life. He is involved in his community. He is a generous friend. He takes care of his body. Walking the streets of Richmond with Epperson is like walking next to the mayor—he seemed to know every shopkeeper and skateboarder we passed.

Source: The Atlantic

We need all kinds of innovations, large and small, to help address the climate emergency. I'm not sure how much 2,200 tonnes of kerosene being saved means in the big scheme of the things, but the technology evidently works, and learning from nature is pretty cool.

The Swiss national airline has now incorporated the shark skin onto all of its long-haul 777 aircraft, with the final example to adorn the technology receiving it at the start of May… Last year, the airline saved nearly 2,200 tonnes of kerosene despite its 777 fleet not being fully fitted at the time.

Rather than being completely smooth, shark skin is unique in its ability to minimize drag through specific grooves, which, in aviation terms, allows for a smoother and more efficient flight.

AeroSHARK replicates this hydrodynamic property on aircraft. It is a “special film” made up of “tiny 50-micrometre riblets that reduce aerodynamic drag during flight.”

Source: Simple Flying

These Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinbugh look pretty awesome. I don’t think Cornel West uses any slides, either, so perfect to rip to MP3 and listen to while I’m out for a run! Although I guess I’ll miss some of his very expressive gestures :)

• Lecture One: Philosophic Prelude
• Lecture Two: Metaphilosophic Andante
• Lecture Three: Folly Presto
• Lecture Four: History Adagio
• Lecture Five: American Allegro Molto Vivace
• Lecture Six: A Love Supreme (A Way Through)

Prof. Cornel West delivers the 2024 Gifford Lecture Series at the University of Edinburgh, titled ‘A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times: From Socrates to Coltrane’.

Source: Bella Caledonia

I’m reserving judgement on this initiative until I find out more, but it seems to be in the same ball park as work done as part of initiatives in the US and Europe. Hopefully, it’s a UK-focused way of getting badges more mainstream, although I’m always a little wary when I see the word ‘microcredential’ as it’s a very supply-side term.

The RSA and Ufi VocTech Trust are leading work in this area. I’m hopefully talking with Rosie Clayton soon, who’s part of the team.

Building a movement towards greater understanding, development, and adoption of digital badges by accrediting bodies, policymakers, and employers, including other micro-credentialling providers outside of our mutual networks

Exploring the quality and interoperability of digital badges used by key awarding and accrediting organisations Making the case for a lifelong digital record of learning using digital badges and micro-credentials

Examining the feasibility of applying QA frameworks to digital badges so that they could be used to reward flexible learning pathways (e.g. in line with the lifelong learning entitlement)

Source: Digital Badging Commission

I’ve been at the Thinking Digital conference this week, where local guy Paul McMurray who works for Accenture, was on stage telling us about a website called Donation Genie.

He discovered that food banks often have to stop creating food parcels for hungry families because they’re missing certain items, and so he responded to a company challenge, won, and has continued to develop his creation to integrate with various APIs to improve efficiency, and thus help more people.

Food banks and warm spaces can update their wishlists detailing what they need.

Donation Genie compiles that information, so you know exactly what your community needs right now.

With Donation Genie, you can target your donation to make the biggest impact in your area.

Source: Donation Genie

Of all of the things that have launched recently, a breath of fresh air has been 404 Media. This is another article from there, which challenges us to think about recent news from OpenAI ushering a future that is less like the film Her and more like Metropolis.

In 1957, German director Fritz Lang introduced the world to the first on-screen fembot with his adaptation of his wife Thea von Harbou’s frenetic urban dystopia novel Metropolis. The character of the Maschinenmensch, a robot woman created by a mad scientist to replicate his dead lover (a deepfake, basically) hypnotizes the effete bourgeois with a dance. The men pant and pull their hair and scream, “For her, all seven deadly sins!”

Before Metropolis, automatons were seen as entertaining, odd tinkerings of inventors and the wealthy. Their history goes back to ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages and into the 18th century. Until that point, machine-men and women were fairly evenly represented (plus a lot of little robot animals). But in the 19th century, with the arrival of the industrial revolution, something changed. People became afraid of the progress happening around them, and feared mass unemployment thanks to these new factories and machines that separated workers from the products of their own labor.

That’s when depictions of the android as female started to take over. When machines started to be seen as a threat to male control, something to be feared and never to be fully understood, they were imagined as seductive pariahs, the original black box. The Maschinenmensch is burned at the stake.

“Fictional and factual fembots each reflect the same regressive male fantasies: sexual outlets and the promise of emotional validation and companionship,” researchers Kate Devlin and Olivia Belton wrote in their 2020 paper. “Underpinning this are masculine anxieties regarding powerful women, as well as the fear of technology exceeding our capacities and escaping our control.” Everyone is fixated on the flirtatious female voice because deep down, under the jokes about e-girls being “so over” and AI girlfriends as responsible for declining birth rates, people are actually, seriously afraid.

Source: 404 Media

Kate Raworth, who came up with the idea of Doughnut Economics, writes in The Guardian about how we need to move beyond the idea of endless growth. This goes beyond alternatives to GDP such as the Human Development Index (HDI) to take into account of environmental factors.

Instead of pursuing endless growth, it is time to pursue wellbeing for all people as part of a thriving world, with policymaking that is designed in the service of this goal. This results in a very different conception of progress: in the place of endless growth we seek a dynamic balance, one that aims to meet the essential needs of every person while protecting the life-supporting systems of our planetary home. And since we are the inheritors of economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, a critical challenge in high-income countries is to create economies that enable us to thrive, whether or not they grow.

[…]

When we turn away from growth as the goal, we can focus directly on asking what it would take to deliver social and ecological wellbeing, through an economy that is regenerative and distributive by design. There are many possibilities – such as driving a low-carbon, zero-waste industrial transformation, with a green jobs guarantee, alongside free public transport, personal carbon allowances, and progressive wealth taxes. Policies like these were, only a decade ago, considered too radical to be realistic. Today they look nothing less than essential.

Source: The Guardian

The older I get, the more different kinds of workouts (or drills) I need to do to keep supple and fit. This ‘James Bond’ workout could be useful, although I’m pretty sure the suit, fun, and martini are optional…

From the James Bond novels, we know that 007 liked to do all sorts of physical activities that could count as exercise: boxing, judo, swimming, and skiing. He was also a golfer, so he got some activity in that way.

[…]

In [From Russia With Love] (one of the 5 best books in the Bond canon), Fleming describes a short calisthenics routine that his secret agent does that’s capped off with a “James Bond shower.”

Source: The Art of Manliness

When you’re a freelancer, consultant, or part of an organisation that relies on contracts or funding from third parties, you get used to financial peaks and troughs. This year, so far, though has been flat. Worryingly flat. I’ve never seen so many Open To Work badges on LinkedIn. I’ve even put up the bat signal.

In this post, Rachel Coldicutt shares some worrying news about organisations in the UK’s social sector — including her own. I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest. Putting on my tinfoil hat would suggest various conspiracy theories, whereas donning my systems thinking hat would suggest a confluence of factors including Brexit, pre-election concerns, experimentation with AI, etc.

Anyway, if you need some help at the intersection of learning, technology, and community, I’m here to help! My organisation, WAO has worked with organisations such as Greenpeace, MIT, and Sport England. We’ve got lots of openly-licensed resources which we can use for consulting or workshops, and we’ve also got experience in running impactful programmes. Let’s have a chat.

“It’s a very British mentality at times of: everything’s bad, don’t expect better for yourself, just get on with your life until you’re dead.”

Another “British mentality” is that most people don’t like to talk about money. Not having it is seen as a failure, asking for it is unimaginably crass. You’re just, somehow, supposed to have it.

[…]

This year should be one of pump priming and relationship building, a time of new beginnings and opportunities. The changes many of us want to see certainly won’t happen quickly, but if we don’t collectively make an effort to share ideas, tell stories, show what’s possible - well, they won’t happen at all. This is a good time to get ready, to rebuild networks and ideas, to make things happen and create the conditions needed for change.

It’s hard to imagine a better future and build alternatives when you’re worrying about the bills.

[…]

From conversations I’m having, it feels like we’ve collectively reached a pretty urgent financial impasse and if we don’t break it, many more organisations will find they have to close this year.

[…]

Usually, organisations like mine - who take on a mix of projects from the small (£15-30k) to the medium (£50-85k) to the large (£150k+) – would get a little financial bump in March and April. We’re just small enough to benefit from the flurry of year-end underspends, and big enough to take part in the proposals and procurement rounds that usually begin with the new financial year. By the end of April, any short- and medium-term gaps in the pipeline have usually been filled.

That hasn’t happened this year. And it’s not just us, everyone I speak with is experiencing the same thing.

Source: Just Enough Internet

Some of these are perhaps a bit too literal for their own good, but this list of Chinese proverbs includes some I hadn’t seen/heard before. But then, I guess, lots of things are dubbed ‘Chinese proverbs’ that are of unknown provenance.

Here’s three of my favourites that I hadn’t come across before:

If you fall down by yourself, get up by yourself.

Every drama requires a fool.

Smart people also do stupid things.

Source: Futility Closet

Image: Henry & Co.

It’s looking like we might get another chance to see the aurora borealis tonight after the spectacular display in most places, including near us.

I thought this xkcd chart was funny/interesting given how underwhelmed I’ve been going to see things like the meridian line in Greenwich, London.

Source: xkcd

If there are people falling in love with chatbots powered by generative AI, you can bet there are people creating chatbots of deceased loved ones. I can understand the temptation, but I can’t see it being a particularly healthy one. And as this article points out, the vectors for disintformation and manipulation is immense.

Known as “deadbots” or “griefbots,” these AI clones are trained on data about the deceased. They then provide simulated interactions with virtual recreations of the departed.

This “postmortem presence” can social and psychological harm, according to researchers from Cambridge University.

Their new study highlights several risks. One involves the use of deadbots for advertising. By mimicking lost loved ones, deadbots could manipulate their vulnerable survivors into buying products.

Another concern addresses therapeutic applications. The researchers fear that these will create an “overwhelming emotional weight.” This could intensify the grieving process into endless virtual interactions.

Source: The Next Web

John Willshire, with whom I had an interesting chat this week, asked a question of Mike Monteiro. I confess not to follow the latter’s work, but liked his thoughtful and considered answer to John’s question: Which internet do you wish we’d ended up with instead of the one we got?

This is the most pertinent part of it, as far as I’m concerned:

Ultimately, I think we got the internet that reflects who we are.

We got an internet where a select few people have a lot of control because they have money. We got an internet where loud angry racists demand a lot of attention because they believe they deserve that attention. But we also got an internet where kids manage to connect with one another. We got an internet where trans kids can get make-up tutorials. We got an internet where the horrors of a genocide can be exposed, as much as the powers-that-be try to stifle that from happening. We got an internet where Kendrick can go ham. We got an internet that reflects both the horror and the beauty of who we are as human beings.

We got the internet that reflects who we are.

Do I want a better internet? Sure. I mean, I’m on it right now. I’d enjoy it more if it wasn’t full of terfs and nazis. But the path to a better internet starts with building a better society. Which starts by redefining what we mean when we say we.

Source: Mike Monteiro’s Good News