Good help is hard to find [post 26/100]

In 2009, Air France suffered the deadliest crash in its history. The short story is that due to a fairly common sensor failure, the autopilot disengaged. Pilots then made a series of questionable decisions that ultimately led to the crash. So, who’s at fault, was the question? Should it be blamed on the human pilots or the technology that failed? …

Chicken Little goes to SXSW* [post 21/100]

Have you heard about the anti-robot protest at SXSW? I read about it this morning and it just made me sad. On the one hand, it’s great that people care about how technology is evolving; on the other hand it’s sad that the thinking is still so simplistic and binary. Down the centuries, every new technological breakthrough has been condemned, …

My Tivo is trying to make me gay* [post 20/100]

I’d like to revisit the topics of personalisation and etiquette in digital services. Over the last 2 days I’ve posted a couple of things about beacons, their potential and also their pitfalls, and I’ve had some feedback across a range of channels that tells me further discussion is warranted about opting in and preferences and user control and all those …

Beacon blues [post 18/100]

I’ve been reading an increasing number of articles lately about how the Internet of Things is going to transform the retail industry. the specific thing that gets mentioned most often is in-store beacons that can broadcast offers and purchase suggestions to shoppers’ smartphones. And every single time I read one of these articles, I get angrier. Because every time, I …

You talkin’ to me? [post 15/100]

Last week I made mention of poor recommendations by way of suggesting that we should maybe stop trying to draw conclusions about everything all the time. This time I want to point out another facet of the problem. I’ve written before about Big Data and the general meaninglessness of that term. Still one of my favourite quotes from 2013 was …

Aspiration: Master or Mimbo? [post 14/100]

Yes, I know, I missed posting yesterday. I’ll make it up to you over the weekend. Anyway, I’ve been continuing to have conversations with people in the creative and technology industries about avoiding techno-dystopia. And as I was discussing this with a friend who doesn’t work in that domain (yes, I have them, shut up), something occurred to me that …

Hunter/gatherers in the 21st century [post 13/100]

Autocorrect failure. Bad recommendations. Offensive ‘related’ content. These are a few of our least favourite things (except in a schadenfreude kind of way). And the frustration we feel comes from the fact that they are all drawing conclusions – the wrong conclusions. It doesn’t help that quite often, we aren’t given adequate means to correct them. A colleague sent me …

You keep using that word: AI and false expectations [post 12/100]

In this wonderful world of technology, we’ve made up lots of words. That’s natural, since we’ve made up lots of new things as well. But sometimes we make up a word and we use it over and over again, even though the word doesn’t really describe the thing that we’re talking about. It reminds me of one of my favourite …

Re-revolution [post 11/100]

Last autumn, some very nice folks from Freunde von Freunden got in touch and invited me to be a part of the Deutsche Bank Stories series. They sent round a very professional and also very fun crew, and despite the fact that I was getting over a bad flu and therefore both sounded and rather looked like something the Swamp …