I was thinking some more on my way down to MIPTV this morning about last week’s post on the (possible) commoditisation of our selves through the wholesale adoption of “helpful” technologies (thanks very much for the comments, by the way, both here and on the backchannels. You know who you are). I don’t want to sound too much like Cassandra …
The Internet of No [post 37/100]
I enjoyed Nick Sweeney’s post from last month about motion and rest and how much of the technology we’ve been inventing recently, including the Apple Watch, is focussed on keeping us in perpetual motion. He muses about its technological antithesis, the ‘Internet of Rest.’ While I concur with his point – a life of perpetual motion is no kind of …
Grandma’s internet refrigerator [post 36/100]
Since it’s International IoT Day today, I thought I’d write something about… IoT. The other day, Alex Deschamps-Sonsino tweeted something that’s been tugging at the corner of my mind since I read it: As usual, I agree wholeheartedly (with all 5 of her points), but this one resonates for a reason that might or might not be what she intended …
Getting it together (the important business of cross-platform design) [post 35/100]
Remember the old days of design for mobile? I mean before the iPhone, when all we had were dumbphones and WAP? That was a gigantic pain in the arse. Screens were tiny, data connections were slow, touch screens were nonexistent. We had to very carefully select which portions of a web site we’d offer in the WAP version – if …
Literature & the value of values [post 34/100]
I spend rather a lot of money on Amazon, as do an enormous number of people. But for the last year and a bit I’ve been trying not to spend as much money there on books. There is no doubt that Amazon offers supreme convenience, and thanks to my travel schedule and a healthy dose of laziness, that has a …
Square pegs, dodecahedral holes (part 2) [post 32/100]
Yesterday I wrote about the idea that we might be able to change the way we think about employment – building roles that suit people’s skills, rather than forcing them into boxes that might not be the right shape for them. That came out of a chat I had last week with David Nordfors, the mastermind behind i4j. We talked …
Behold, the robot… invasion? [posts 27-28/100]
This week is MEX15, always a fun event but particularly so for me this time, as I was invited not only to speak but to facilitate some creative sessions with the goal of producing some design principles around my topic, which is robots. Since I’m pretty deeply engaged with what’s happening here, this post will have to stand for yesterday …
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? …
Uber: another side to the story (part 2) [post 24/100]
Yesterday I started a post about what lies under the usual Uber arguments. Today it continues… 4. Uber shows you (the gaps in) the local market In London, UberEx is almost always a better experience than the local minicab company. Having spoken to loads of Uber drivers, I now know that the best of them are refugees from the minicab …