Articles are my medium form output. They are researched, but don't go to the same level of depth nor are as closely argued as my essays. But they are more considered than my jottings.
Category Articles
Ghost Writers — Rise of the Machines
Ultimately, I do not think the problem is that we are building machines so ‘smart’ that their output is indistinguishable from human compositions. The problem is that we are educating humans whose output is so illiterate, and devoid of experience, it is indistinguishable from computer generated text.
Read MoreAn Opportunity Afforded
This is why some people will look at a library and see a wealth of opportunity, while others will see the same space and same books and apprehend only barriers to entry or exclusion from a world in which they think they have no part to play.
Read MoreAutodeleting the Public Record
Rage if you will and burn screen time if you like — I simply accept if I want my thoughts to be personal and private then I ought not post them online.
Read MoreReview — Doom, The Politics of Catastrophe
So long as we keep our heads while all around are loosing theirs, never dwelling too long on exaggerated threats, we are in a position to muddle through.
Read MoreTwas Gunpowder Treason Day
As late as 2015, Royals who married Catholics were removed from the line of succession, and Prime Ministers avoided disclosing their Catholicism in office.
Read MoreQuestions for a Future Employer
An interview is a crossroad, one at which you are making a choice between merely seeking a job and wage or using the opportunity to grow a career.
Read MoreResponse — We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives
Those of us who believe in the merits of conservatism, the road ahead is one on which it is more important than ever to start calling ourselves conservatives.
Read MoreReading More Efficiently And Effectively
I can well picture 'Hitch', cigarette languidly hanging from the corner of his mouth, hand clasped around a whisky glass, tossing the book toward the wastepaper bin, and then leaning back in his chair. Content in the knowledge he had repaid the reading in the only way fit.
Read MoreCR III Royal Cypher
The design of the CR III cipher was produced by the College of Arms and continues a tradition of heraldry that has bound individual monarchs to the institution of monarchy for over a thousand years.
Read MoreResponse – Why PI Planning is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing
When PI Planning is deployed by leaders who have the nuance, skill, and strategic capability to deliver an Agile project with a multi-year roadmap, PI Planning is an invaluable framework for program delivery.
Read MoreResponsibility, Ownership, Accountability
These are words we use often in an organisational context, but words that are seldom discussed; and when discussed, often done so opaquely or inaccurately.
Read MoreTwenty Years of Firefox
Little did I know how consistently Firefox would be my window to the World Wide Web, nor how its security, and in time privacy focus, would shape my understanding of what it means to be online.
Read MoreOn Fairy-Stories and the Art of Fantasy
'Fantasy (in this sense) is, I think, not a lower but a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.'
Read MoreWith a Quiet Heart
The Queen was an ever constant in a changeable and unpredictable world. Over seven decades, she was always there for us.
Read MoreThe Subjective Nature of ‘Nothing to Hide’
Whether you have something to hide has far more to do with who is looking than what they can see.
Read More5 reasons I will be celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee
It becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Read MoreAt A Journey’s End
I have a thesis of which I am proud, and a marriage to my beautiful wife Halaina — who has been a constant source of love, joy, and support as I laboured in the archives.
Read MoreThey Are Teachable
One of History's lessons is that once a group is deemed unteachable they will be placed in the category of an ever present threat to the preferred social order.
Read MoreHugo: Or, There and Back Again
Time again at a premium, I mused on my latest quest for minimalism. In doing so I realised that I was creating as many problems as I was solving.
Read MoreResponse — Sitting with Ambiguity
Sit with ambiguity, but be aware of when a seemingly circular conversation is enhancing a definitional understanding and when it is just a group of individuals unable to comprehend ambiguity hoping that a drawn out conversation will nail down the problem.
Read MoreHow I Write — Long Form Research
From time to time, I contemplate how I publish. Mostly because I like 'the elegance of a refined workflow'.
Read MoreTeflon Leadership
Those who rise to the top jobs, do so not because they are better leaders or have fewer blots on their copybook — it is because they are better able to shrug off criticism and weather the blistering attacks that are directed at all holders of public office.
Read MoreMoxie and the Server
To determine if the statement is 'true', we don't need to poll everyone — only to understand the category of the statement.
Read MoreThe Linux Paradigm
In science, a paradigm is a model or pattern — a typical instance or exemplar. But in rhetoric, my chosen field, it is an example or guide as to how one should behave.
Read MorePower and Control: Tech Billionaires in Politics
Don't worry about the populist, worry about what comes after them. And what is coming seems clear: Billionaires of the 2.0 revolution.
Read MorePolywork, A New Professional Network
I have often thought that an individual is far more than their job title or pay scale. Which means that even in a professional networking context, your portfolio of experience should also include your experiences.
Read MoreFourth Way – Living in Harmony with our Online Presence
Instead of these three paths, the Fourth Way seeks to provide an alternative in which a student can seek to find a sense of mastery while still living their everyday life.
Read MoreMy Copy of The Times
When we cut each other off from access to knowledge, we may preserve our copyright, but we run the risk of endangering our copy's posterity.
Read MoreLife is Long, Access is Short
If not accidentally lost, your data can vanish in other ways: the community project shutters, a company goes under, or the subset of services you use are axed.
Read MoreA Peer’s Tube
Winter Ink PeerTube will allow for the documenting and preservation of videos to which I can link in my ongoing speculations about life and art. Links, and the content they reference, which are permanent and will always work. A necessity to promote the adoption of individually-owned and controlled sovereign spaces which enable an open and healthy web.
Read MoreThe New Cathedral Door
Does it truly safeguard that which is dangerous and true while restricting that which is dangerous and false, and does it arrive at this determination through a process of deliberation; or, does it merely replace one arbitrary determination for another about that which is dangerous.
Read MoreScribble, Scribble, Scribble
I think it was the George III who is reputed to have said to the great historian Edward Gibbon: “Another…
Hail, Lobster!
The moment when left leaning popular culture overreached itself and instead of fascist shaming a once obscure academic into silence, brought back into popular use what had long been taboo and empowered the very thing they thought they were destroying.
Read More100 Days of Muse & Reason
Well, I have reached the end of the 100daystooffload.com challenge and the numbers are as follows: 100 posts in 100…
Contribution Manifesto
In the spirit of a benign dictatorship, my determination of quality contributions will be both objective and subjective. No offence is intended, but as offence is a social construct, taking it is at your discretion.
Read MoreCopying Old Masters
For the better part of 400 years, the production of art in France was largely controlled by artistic academies. With…
Virus From Below
The history of the world, for a long time, was the history of great people. Mostly great men. It focused…
I Saw The World End
I went up to the hillside and took a panorama view of the city and found the whole city on fire. - Kiyoshi Tanimoto,
Read MoreSerialisation
Whether pre-prepared or thought out during serialisation, it provides for a short or medium content format which addresses a long form topic.
Read MoreThe Ability To Ignore
Since the earliest days of our evolution on the savanna, our visual and aural senses have been attuned to ignore content.
Read MoreLate Abroad Again
As the contagion bit hard, Pepys chronicled the flight from the city, mostly of doctors, lawyers and merchants. Then as now, only those with the financial means to do so can seek refuge in seclusion.
Read MoreArt as Background
Turner was something of a privacy advocate. In the 1841 census he rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as being present at any property
Read MoreWedding Feast
In the tradition of my family, and the civilised everywhere, I will be planning the meal starting with dessert, working through the main to the entree.
Read MoreFinding Confidence
While the fool is wise who opens not his mouth, the quiescence of the thoughtful is a loss for society. This is particularly the case when it comes to social media and blogging.
Read MoreFinding Time
Find a trigger which helps you to get in the frame for writing, leverage the power of habit and set your inner candidate to the task.
Read MoreThe Case for Listenership
In some senses this is very apt, as on social media we are too often prisoners in a system providing emotional support to other prisoners.
Read MoreBeware Generalisation
A writer can fall into the trap of imagining because 67% of respondents to a survey support X, there is genuinely wide spread support for the proposition..
Read MoreSupporting Evidence
My weekends are usually spent cloistered away in my study, working on one project or another. My fiancée laments I…
Tranquility Reflected
Day 83 of the 100 day challenge and I have drawn a total blank. I have faced writers block before,…
Nibbled By System
I am a simple man who fears being nibbled by system. I like things I can see and touch. In…
Easy To Use
I learn today that Jules-Albert de Dion took the chequed flag in the world’s first motor race, the Paris–Rouen in…
Emotional Contagion
Emotional Contagion is the phenomenon of feeling what it appears someone else is experiencing. Art abounds with examples of this,…
The Giant’s Causeway
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, lived in an age in which titles were grand and letters and diaries were…
To CDN Or Not To CDN
As the great bard made a Prince of Denmark once say: To be, or not to be, that is the…
And I’m Feeling Good
Today was a day of relaxing. Well, it started in mild dismay looking at the stock markets, descended into a…
Site With Less Byte
This has started me on my own quest for a lighter footprint in my publishing platform. To that end, there is much tinkering to do.
Read MoreThe Shape Of Things That Are
Though conclusions drawn from data may be offensive, we should be slow to take offence at data. Even if it contradicts our deeply held beliefs.
Read MoreShape of Things to Come
A striking feature of Wells' book is the way in which he prefigured 'cancel culture' in the thinking of his fictional social scientist.
Read MoreFête Nationale
I could not let July 14 pass without a nod to that most French of occasions: Bastille Day. A celebration…
Five Stages of Autonomy
At this stage, employees, whether remote or in an office, enjoy true autonomy. The Nirvana Mullenweg and Co. are in search of for their businesses.
Read MoreGothic Reprieve
Musing on how the building I passed was the very antithesis of the Gothic, I found myself recalling some of the majestic architecture of the past.
Read MoreSpot the Gorilla
For me, this can become frankly as depressing as, to quote Blackadder:
getting an arrow through the neck and discovering there's a gas bill tied to it.
Read MoreSkepticism and Wonder
In the vast ignorance of a society absent of sceptical enquiry, evil festers and spreads, like the coming of night, and all foul things come forth.
Read MoreDoomsday Clock
The concept of a clock was chosen because it implies that unless we stop the seconds from ticking down, the hands will inevitably reach midnight.
Read MoreTo Federate, But How?
It also raises questions about cross posting to other platforms, such as Medium, which are the natural hunting ground of avid readers.
Read MoreLosing Readers?
While I am not a popularity junkie, it is more gratifying to know one is writing for a large than a small audience as I write to try and assist others.
Read MoreCartographic Escapism
Hogwarts was not only the best but, if you didn't read the text carefully and skipped whole sections of Goblet of Fire, the only wizarding school.
Read MoreA Change Management Primer
Knowing this only shifts the problem from 'how' to 'when'. In other words, at what speed should the change management take place?
Read MoreA Land of Chilly Riverways
To a man weened on 'beautiful one day, perfect the next' descriptions of his adoptive land, it comes as a shock to find it so chilly a dull earache begins.
Read MoreOde to a Yoghurt Pot
Bellowing preconceived ideas with ever increasing volume is seldom a path to organisational success and Vedic happiness.
Read MoreLacklustre
Today… what can I say about today… it was nothing out of the ordinary, very lacklustre indeed. Neither terrifying nor…
How I Publish — Version 3.0
Avid readers, and those who accidentally stumbled in searching for something else, will have seen deliberations on whether or not to switch platforms.
Read MoreFinding Flow – Basics
Musing the topic, three ideas immediately spring to mind, which is a suitable number for the 100 Days challenge.
Read MoreTime Capsule I
The novelist saw more clearly the differences between fact and fiction. That notions of a 'better world' tomorrow is a fallacy of the doctrine of progress.
Read MoreDown the Rabbit Hole
Not a nice, cosy little hole, you understand. Rather a long and seemingly unending one. After you've fallen down it, you never know where you will come out.
Read MoreLeading From The Front
Plato wrote of cardinal virtues and their importance in the character of a good city. It is tempting to pickup this theme in regards to leadership.
Read MoreRed Tape Is Fun
As a child, the sense of being tested vexed me much. This persisted into early adulthood, as I steadfastly continued to avoided administration.
Read MoreA Novel Approach to Music
I share Gilmour's puzzlement that more authors don't team up with musicians to add another dimension to their audiobooks.
Read MoreThe Base Camp of Everest
I have to stand on the shoulders of giants or, more specifically, tinker with the work of others to accomplish the end result desired.
Read MoreCircular Conversations
I seem to recall a time when life was filled with good conversation. The kind of talks in which minutes melted into hours.
Read MoreLabours of Love
As the saying goes, 'God is in the detail' and only by finessing the little things does the overall project take on a majestic form.
Read MorePoint Of No Return
Ever a man to love a bit of tinkering, the blogging process has also proved to be as much a technical as a mental exercise.
Read MoreConfessions of a Platform Junkie
Having perused and discarded a number of options (Medium, Tumblr, Squarespace and Jekyll), I am now caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Read MoreThe Problem of Over Correction
While many will cheer and even demand over correction, given the 'historical injustice,' many questions remain unanswered.
Read MoreThe Struggle is Topic
There is no dearth of ideas, but each was pondered and rejected in turn as the research involved exceeds the allotted time for this daily challenge.
Read MoreThe Over Consumption of Doubt
For the ancients, doubting was the end of a lifelong quest for truth. For moderns, it has become the beginning rather than end of speculation.
Read MorePeasants’ Revolt
Much the same could be said for the current protests. Eventually the people will leave the streets and things will largely go back to how they were.
Read MoreLetterheady
One superb example of the genre is the business letterhead of Nikola Tesla - after whom the car company is named. Stunning share by Letterheady.
Read MoreThe Power of the Snub
Declines in sexual activity seem to owe more to 'the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the global recession of 2008' than fear of contracting Aids.
Read MoreCompeting Thoughts
Today was a day in which, if you’ll forgive this writer a reification, my thoughts have been battling in my…
Damnatio Memoriae
Memory is more than the activity of an individual. It is an object, in so much as a statue or inscription reminds passers by of a person or event.
Read MoreMedia Archipelago
Pushing back on unorthodox views has given rise to 'wrongspeak,' 'the things we believe to be true but cannot say,' creating a Media Archipelago.
Read MoreThe Better Part of Valour
Obama made sure to bring together the past with the present. Memory stalking the impatiently advancing future. Into the party…
Cold Calling Students
While the line between a Socratic acceptance of the limits of our knowledge and genuine ignorance is blurred, academia's financial rapacity knows no bounds.
Read MoreModern Pocket Boroughs
Yet for all the antics, there was a certain honesty about such naked corruption. Votes were sold and it was clear who was buying them.
Read MoreInto the Jaws of Death
One of the most memorable photographs of D-Day was taken by Chief Photographer's Mate Robert F. Sargent and aptly titled 'Into the Jaws of Death.'
Read MoreUpdating My Plank
As a man who loves his technology, one thing I enjoy reading about is how others use theirs. There is…
The Case of the Dangling Toad
Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area, drove away the contagion and drew out the poison.
Read MoreTake Notes, No One Is Watching
End to End Privacy requires providing users with encryption everywhere they don't control. This is a promise a platform needs to uphold.
Read MoreLetters of Note
Today I pay homage to one brilliantly penned piece by WSC, from an age when they both inked and blotted.
Read MoreMental Indigestion
Much as I wallowed in the majestic minimalism of how I publish, I now find myself revelling in a new minimalism of how I read.
Read MoreParliamentary Privilege
Sidestepping Trump's wounded pose and Twitter's egregious claim of the moral high ground and an interesting question about politics and speech emerges.
Read MoreProportionality in Pursuit of Justice
Specifically put, proportionality isn't a one way street in which the power of the state is neutered to the benefit of an individual.
Read MoreDistributism
To replace a People's Republic network with a Democratic Club network isn't necessarily an improvement because it only prefences one centralised solution over another.
Read MoreThe New Commons
As our forebears strove for the aspiration to vote, the mortgaging of our data for access to services requires us to strive for the aspiration to privacy.
Read MoreGrey Eminence
Sadly, for our attempts to hold power to account, the 'what' is lost to the political 'how,' with which side wins becoming the benchmark for 'account.'
Read MoreContemplating Content
Though a visual man, I have grown tired of the flickering images of social media where unlimited filters and effects cannot cover the dearth of thought.
Read MoreSo I Could See Further
In the main, scholars, developers and researchers cite those who have gone before, without whose work their own product would be much reduced.
Read MoreA Day of Rest
If I seek a day in which I am not on duty, and politicians are merely flesh and blood, should they too not be allowed a moments reprieve?
Read MoreAirbrushing Memory
With digital services often serving as our memory, to remove content from personal drives is to airbrush our memory.
Read MorePlease keep scrolling
Perhaps this is the heart of my distaste for much social media: it is designed to halt my thinking and focus my attention, not impell me to think on.
Read MoreA Marvellous Idea for a Blog
I didn't have the time to write you a short blog about historical analogies, so I wrote about something else.
Read MoreDead Certainties
The key is to avoid reading events falsely, which inevitably leads to politics shaping what we think is true.
Read MoreCode is Speech?
A point to remember when next your private moments are leveraged to improve a marketing algorithm. The unintended consequence of code is speech.
Read MoreLanguage Defect: Privacy
The issue is not can they keep my data safe from an unauthorised third party, but can they keep my data safe from their algorithms.
Read MoreCentralising the Decentralised
The only prevention is to discourage the banning of alternative views and instead engagement in rational discourse.
Read MoreMarshal Your Argument
Like a genre in publishing, a work forms part of an existing discourse and this creates certain ground rules for how words will be read and ideas conveyed.
Read MoreHow I Write – Technology
At first, my thinking rebels against the act of concentration. A day spent being pulled in a myriad of directions does not for a focused mind make.
Read MoreHow I Publish — Version 2.0
My quest for a publishing platform which was both elegant, unencumbered by endless plug-ins and left me alone with my text, brought me to write.as.
Read MoreThe Cloud of Unknowing
The question today, for whom do you write? Perhaps to improve your scribblings; perhaps to attract a general audience; or perhaps it is for posterity?
Read More‘Good night, and good luck.’
This causes something of a paradox. I thought I would have to take a leave pass to not write today, yet pondering this has caused me to write today.
Read MoreSo this is how privacy dies…
To be a part of a society which doesn't take these choices means the most meaningful solution is to look at ambient as well as personal privacy.
Read MoreGakyō Rōjin
A compelling aspect is the way in which Hokusai's work burgeoned as he aged. An unconscious reaction to feeling we are yet to realise our potential.
Read MoreEndurance Through Renewal
I came across a stone bench that appeared to be very old. Carved into an ancient looking wall, dappled in moss, thick creepers wound across its surface.
Read MoreThe Pied Piper of Zoom
In a sense, our online privacy is much like a child, vulnerable to the world and easily spirited away by a platform which offers ease of connection.
Read MoreThe Perfect Moment
Though it is not clear if this is the poet or the urn speaking, what is clear is that the passage seeks to transcend visual value.
Read More‘Oh, the humanity!’
The past, which comes flooding in, transports us to a moment which is both frozen in time and animated by our thinking. 'Oh, the humanity!'
Read MoreMay the Third be with you
It is fitting these memorial days are side by side because a central theme in the Star Wars saga was the freedom of peoples to live according to their need.
Read MoreOne Hundred Days…
My writing efforts are usually months in gestation. Thus I am out of the habit of a daily journal. #100DaysToOffload should fix that.
Read MoreThe City of Love
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Stephen Hawking There…
‘God is Dead’
I know I know… you don’t need to shout it I am not so superannuated that I am deaf to…
Age, Evil And A Better World
Age hit me the other day. To be precise it hit my right hamstring. It was cold and I got…
Is this what Warhol meant?
In 1968 the doyen of pop art, Andy Warhol, said: ‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.’…
The Minnow, The Whale And The Deep Blue Sea
Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.
Read MoreTruth and Beauty
Never before in the history of the world has so much information been so easily accessible. Name virtually any topic…