Russell Davies

EBCB revisited

A three-year-late update about the Lorelei at EBCB revisited. 

Refusing to learn

I think the thing I really want to talk about at Strategy v Robots is the relationship between large organisations and technology. That seems to be the at the root of a lot of things.

And one of the themes that keeps beating me over the head is the way organisations seem incapable of learning anything from those that have gone before.

Social media, for instance, is not a new or unstudied phenomenon. Twitter is, after all, 10 years old today.

And yet, despite the obvious lessons of Mr Splashy Pants, here comes Boaty McBoatface.

Maybe it's all deliberate, maybe it's a clever viral campaign, maybe. I hope so.

But there's something real going on here, clever people refusing to learn.

Organisations making the same mistakes over and over again.

First, software eats the world...

...then, software methods eat all other methods

eg: Music as software

Wordy twist

I've started writing for Campaign again, I can't remember if I told you that. I wrote a thing about interfacing with robots and snuck in some tricky Javascript that changes some of the words every couple of seconds. It's not really necessary for this piece but I wanted to make sure it worked with the CMS because I want to do something a bit fancier next time.

And big thanks to Tom for showing me how to do it. 

(It seems like Typepad doesn't allow the same kind of nonsense)

EBCB

I finally did a new entry: The Little Portland Cafe

Experience Stylist

In 2008 I posted this typo under the oh-so-amusing heading 'job titles of the future'. Now it's a real job. Fancy being a Peak Customer Experience Stylist?

Nuke the moon

I think this is one for the Analogy Library, I came across it on a radio documentary. I think.

At one point, in the fifties, the United States Air Force developed a plan to explode a nuclear device on the moon. Partly, and I bet this was post-rationalised cover, for scientific reasons. But mostly to boost US morale after the Soviets took the lead in the space race. The idea was that you'd be able to see the explosion on earth.

Obviously the Soviet Union had a similar plan.

Four years ago

The New Aesthetic and writing

Six years ago

As featured in Fast Company

Bruno and Italia

Ben was kind enough to buy me these two lovely drawings for my birthday; the twin pillars of my Soho life Bar Italia and Bar Bruno (pictured before its latest revamp). They're by Eleanor Crow who does gorgeous stuff. Thanks Ben!