Your life as a cyborg superhero

A few weeks I did a workshop with this title atĀ Frontiers of Interaction. This was not about dressing up as Seven of Nine or the Terminator; this was about getting people thinking differently about technology, design, the things we all make. I’m as enamoured with shiny new toys as the next person (probably more so than most), but that’s not …

Indispensably Useless (the value of art)

In September, I spoke at Retune13, at the behest of the lovely Ms. Marguerite Joly. My talk was on a topic I don’t touch on all that often but which is hugely meaningful to me: art. Specifically, my brief was to talk about the value of art, to try to address the question of what makes good work. I’ve spoken …

Signal emerging

It’s amazing what a few days of near-offline-ness can do. Since the 21st of December, I’ve ignored Twitter entirely, spent very little time on other social networks (maybe 60 minutes in 2 weeks), and engaged in only the bare minimum of emailing. I’ve also thought and conversed very little about matters digital, giving preference instead to longish periods of stillness …

What price success? (a note on corporate ethics)

Last week I spoke at FOM12, and the closing question was a proper BOOM. The questioner asked whether I think it’s inherently wrong for businesses to use personal data to target products, ads and content. I found myself saying, “It comes down to ethics.” It felt a little weird to say that, although I was gratified to see a few …

The hero with a thousand faces (thanks, Joe Campbell)

[I’ve recently been re-reading some of the work of my hero Joseph Campbell, which inspired my talk on Monday at Next Service Design in Berlin, which you can watch here. Below is (more or less) what I talked about…] What is the soundtrack to your life? Even if you don’t have an answer, you understand the question – because every …

Blinded by the light

This is the less selfish post that accompanies my previous oneā€¦ and in many ways, the more important of the two. As I mentioned, I spoke at both Picnic and MEX last week. As a result, I came home with a head jam-packed full of awesome, and am only just now able to start sifting through the highlights. The overarching …

Me and my (data) shadow

I’ve been on a bit of a speaking tour the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been growing more vested in and impassioned by my current topic every time I talk about it. What I’ve been talking about is how we can become more human, better at being human, using all the richness of data and technology that we are …