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Recalling the usual-ness of this solo experience—
Like rediscovering an old comfortable sweater.
Wandering slow. Accompanied by hues,
Flashes of soul-renders, deliberate
Patterning and curatorial invitations.
Inviting considerations to a more aesthetic path.
Re-emerging from we to me.
What a joy to converse with fellow curious soul Digby Scott on his new fortnightly podcast, Dig Deeper, conversations with depth to change the way you lead:
We talk about mundanity (it’s now a word, sod off!), hobbies, context vs content, audacity, white space, delegate experience design, what’s eternal, hearing, listening, speaking, storytelling, coaching, translation / narration / curation / host leadership™ plus what the world needs more of.
Hope you enjoy and thank you again Digby for the opportunity to spend time with you again!
“But how can I not want to write a book? And I get it: writing a book is sacred and unquestionable, the ultimate achievement for Western intellectuals—better than being arrested in a protest (because you don’t have to get sweaty), better than a PhD (because not so devalued), and better even than going to Harvard (because that mostly means you got lucky in admissions). It’s something I’ve definitely aspired to since I became a bookworm: imagining joining the pantheon of authors shelved in my local library, to be able to hold my hardcover book in my hands (perhaps even one with… gilt-edged pages?), and carp about how ‘the publisher chose the cover’.”
Why To Not Write A Book · Gwern.net“Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models. Australia’s ABC News reports that Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially rejected claims about user data from 2007 being leveraged for AI training during a local government inquiry about AI adoption before relenting after additional questioning.”
Meta fed its AI on everything adults have publicly posted since 2007 – The Verge“More and more researchers across specialties are questioning our current definitions of depression. Biological anthropologists have argued that depression is an adaptive response to adversity and not a mental disorder. In October, the British Psychological Society published a new report on depression, stating that “depression is best thought of as an experience, or set of experiences, rather than as a disease.” And neuroscientists are focusing on the role of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in depression. According to the Polyvagal Theory of the ANS, depression is part of a biological defense strategy meant to help us survive.”
We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us. | Psychology Today“In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners, Cox Media Group (CMG), has been using sophisticated technology to listen to users’ smartphone microphones and advertise to them based on their conversations… In the same pitch deck, CMG claimed that major tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon, were clients of its “Active Listening” service. However, the response from these companies has been varied and cautious.”
Facebook partner admits smartphone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads – Inshort
NotebookLM Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human—Spiral Into Terrifying Existential Meltdown
byu/Lawncareguy85 innotebooklm
Spiral Betty is free for non-commercial use.
Unblah is a meeting-buddy who keeps track of how long you’re speaking.
The Spectrum hits retail on 22 November 2024 and can be pre-ordered now.
Here’s a list of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes.
SatirifyMe transforms ordinary statements into witty, humorous text effortlessly.
Moodist is a free and open-source ambient sound generator featuring 78 carefully curated sounds.
FreeTube – The Private YouTube Client with privacy built-in, options to subscribe to channels plus NO ADS!
Subtitle Me, a simple menubar app that listens to you speak and translates you into one of 20 different languages (runs completely on-device).
“…comprising the leather travelling briefcase (c.24 x 33cms), leather wallet containing Rilke’s wooden pen-holder, nib and ivory pen-knife, and a glass ink-pot; together with an autograph letter by Rilke signed (“Rainer Maria Rilke”), to Herr Keller of the publishers Insel-Verlag, about Ullmann’s poems “Erntetag”, “Der Knecht” and “Vor der Ernte”, and enclosing a corrected proof of Ullmann’s poems, 2 pages, 4to, with an autograph envelope addressed to Ullmann, Munich, 13 January 1919; a few ink stains (on) the briefcase.”
The original approach to this blog post was a reflective look back from my initial online forays during my first year of University, writing essays on hyper-reality as part of the course I was taking, then participating in the most early social networking platforms, right through to building businesses around the emerging space plus everything up till now.
I scrapped that as was getting bored and my fingers hurt. So started writing 30 things I learned (one for each year) in an attempt to extract some wisdom from being an early adopter.
But that went by the wayside as could only conjure up a dozen or so and they felt a little ‘preachy’, so, I’m just going to mark it with a simple side-eye and a tut.
A physical gesture and audible proclamation which sums up how I feel about the whole tech and interwebs space currently.
So many online platforms and services plus the technology we now use to access this incredible tool for humanity, is designed to purposefully trick and hide the fact that it’s all about extraction…
…extracting attention, the good vibes / kinship / playfulness which fuels our mortal souls, the pioneering spirit enabled through accessibility, plus even vacuuming up the whole web without permission and / or attribution to then build predictive-pattern-regurgitators-wrapped-up-in-AI-branded-interfaces which users can be charged again for.
This enshittification matches the stuff I wrote about a couple of years ago about suction media and the death of social, or the pauses we have lost, or the trend of email gating is eroding the web of trust, or how BookFace is worse than a casino and banks on you not caring (extra link on how the original cofounder thinks the same here), or the shitfire that Twitter has become.
Side-eye and a tut.
However, I still believe in the inherent positive power of the internet: how it creates unique opportunities for voice, agency, story, connectiveness, learning, to amplify intentional technology in enhancing the whole human project, through kindness and participation not commodification and engineered engagement.
So here’s to the next 30 years and the evolving nature of the online space, more laws and governance over data sovereignty, transparency of data use, the universal shift back to adding not reducing value, building opportunities for people to link up their creativity, along with and making people think and / or smile.
These offerings was inspired by a real life event (“I don’t do mundane” was my response when someone asked for ‘mundane’ from me). That value destroyed a career path, meant the loss of a healthy dose of money / about a year in time / loads of positive energy, and deeply affected my mental health, because:
“A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something.”
Bill Bernbach
…so I’m turning that deeply negative experience into a gift of inspiration and designed the following for audacious humans with aligned principles (the posters would be great for offices, workshops, classrooms, meeting rooms, funky shops / cafes, creative and co-working spaces etc. plus the cards to celebrate / encourage someones imaginative approaches):
Eighteen items from three designs, with two variations on each (colour / no colour) across another three product options of greeting cards, matte posters and / or framed posters.
All designed by me, no AI, via Procreate and Keynote.
And please send me a pic of the purchase in situ as would love to see where they have found a home!
I’m enchanted by the greeting, the flourish in his script, especially in the delicately nuanced letter ‘d’, that stem is majestic, as well as slight slant of the line.
The above “Chère Madame / Dear Madam” was written on Sunday 10th December 1922, from Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland, (where the author completed the famed Duino Elegies in ‘a savage creative storm’ earlier that same year):
Even though Rilke was Austrian and wrote most of his prose / poetry in German, he could also speak and write in French, in which this letter was penned to a lady called Marie Morisse (who I can’t find anything of online). Using a translation app on my phone and others online here’s the whole letter in English (apologies to any native speakers and any mistakes):
The two books referenced are The Last Years of Rodin by Marcelle Tirel which starts in the Preface stating: here is a very curious book about Auguste Rodin (Rodin was a friend, inspired this essay from Rilke and had died five years previous to this letter), and Letters of Lieutenant Duponey / Dupont (which might relate to this chap / book who was an Admiral not a Lieutenant, maybe not).
His penmanship is different in many other letters, probably due to what we all suffer from like basic tiredness, lack of focus and / or other things going on (Rilke was nothing but feelings personified).
Such a delight to explore and ‘trace’ through a correspondence written over 100 years ago by an author whose words and sentiments echo through me!
Now where is my fountain pen‽
“Creativity is made, not generated. Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us. We’re here for the humans. We’re not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community.”
Creativity is made, not generated — Procreate®
“Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. Humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way our networks are built predisposes us to use power unwisely. For most of our networks have been built and maintained by spreading fictions, fantasies and mass delusions – ranging from enchanted broomsticks to financial systems. Our problem, then, is a network problem. Specifically, it is an information problem. For information is the glue that holds networks together, and when people are fed bad information they are likely to make bad decisions, no matter how wise and kind they personally are.”
‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
“In an email reported by the New York Times, Condé Nast’s CEO, Roger Lynch, said that the deal will make up for some of the revenue that technology companies have snagged publishers in recent years. He wrote: “Generative AI is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information. It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are an embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property.” Other media companies have taken the opposite tack. The New York Times and the Intercept have sued OpenAI for using their articles. The litigation is ongoing.”
OpenAI signs multi-year content partnership with Condé Nast | Technology | The Guardian
“Like designing any immersive experience, a public place captures the imagination of its visitor. It offers a promise. How a place looks (Form) and its practical purpose (Function), should be informed by its “guest promise” (Fulfillment).”
Margaret Kerrison | ex-Imagineer on placemaking | bloolop
“A recently published report by digital collaboration management company Vyopta found a correlation between employee retention and camera enablement during virtual meetings. Workers who left their organization within a year of the study’s sample period (Q1 2022 and Q1 2023) turned their cameras on in just 18.4 percent of small group meetings, while employees who stayed at their organization were on camera in 32.5 percent of such meetings. The report — which involved 450,000 employees and data from 40 million meetings worldwide — shows that companies need to make a concerted effort to establish an effective virtual meeting culture…”
Camera-Off Time in Virtual Meetings Could Be a Bad Sign for Employee Retention, Study Finds | Inc.com
“In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes. The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat. The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.”
A new model of empathy: The rat – The Washington Post
“Last week, Google backtracked on its long-standing promise to block third-party cookies in Chrome. This is bad for your privacy and good for Google’s business. Third-party cookies are a pervasive tracking technology that allow companies to snoop on your online activity for surveillance and ad-targeting purposes. The consumer harm caused by these cookies has been well-documented for years, prompting Safari and Firefox to block them since 2020. Google knows this—that’s why they pledged to phase out third-party cookies in 2020. By abandoning this plan, Google leaves billions of Chrome users vulnerable to online surveillance.”
Google Breaks Promise to Block Third-Party Cookies | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Automatisch is an Open Source Zapier Alternative.
The Unanswered Oddities playlist is a superb use of AI.
A minimalist town builder with trams to play in your browser.
These wonderful Werner Herzog Inspirationals are posters for our time.
RSS still rules so here are a bunch of tools which will aid defining your own media menu.
Create vector dotted maps with custom options and download them as SVG or PNG files.
This brand new professional development program was recently delivered for a wonderful international client over 5x 2.5hour online sessions with twelve leaders from three continents across four countries—highly participatory in nature and focused on increasing the literacy levels of those involved aligned to specific strategic needs.
Interviews were undertaken with chosen participants to first gain an understanding of levels of literacy as well as current approaches. Desk research regarding language use, industry trends and internal policies was also undertaken. All this ensured the course was custom made to ensure relevance and impact.
Here’s the result:
“We recently had the opportunity to learn from DK as we launched the Better Futures Catalyst program, a facilitated public speaking initiative at Steelcase. This program brought together a cohort of employees from around the world to enhance our presentation skills by focusing on our people and planet efforts. DK created a bespoke hybrid program, guiding us in developing compelling stories and boosting our confidence in public speaking—both in-person and virtually. Our final presentations showcased remarkable growth, with each of us effectively weaving our unique experiences into an engaging narrative. We are so grateful to DK for his authentic approach, for creating a safe space for us to learn together and from each other, and for the number of resources he shared throughout the journey. Highly recommend!”
Kim Koeman, Global Director, Social Innovation at Steelcase
Steelcase are currently lining up a second cohort to repeat the learning opportunity this year with the view of a future ‘advanced’ offering for those who have been through the first ones.
There’s also the anonymous participants feedback gathered post-course talking about the outcome, approach and course effects:
Get in touch to explore further the process, alignment, costs and availability—only running a handful of these a year due to the time it takes to craft and deliver plus other commitments.
I did something similar (albeit in-person) for Sir Peter Jackson’s personal post production studio a few years back and fantastic to now have a couple of case studies of this instructional activity plus impact:
“We contracted DK to run several sessions with members of our leadership team and other staff who are required to present ideas, solutions, explanations and work flow information to clients and audiences. The sessions were so insightful and the feedback was extremely positive, even the most cynical were surprised at what they could achieve and change the way one approaches preparation and off the cuff speaking. A highly productive and useful experience and one we will repeat.”
Vicki Jackways, Head of Marketing, Park Road Post Production
Don’t know who said it first but wish I knew this sooner.