Russell Davies

History is written by the bloggers

I think 'writing the history' was one of the first couple of things I asked Giles to think about when he came to work at GDS. Neither of us really knew what that meant, just that it felt important. Well, he's worked out what it meant and today they've published it.

I love how it's history written about, for, on and of the web. :

I love how there's virtually no 'writing' in it at all. It's all research and links. Which, of course, makes it a better form of writing. I know for a fact that Giles has elegant paragraphs telling many of these same stories, but links and fragments are much better ways to do it.

I love how, like the web, this story is now difficult to remove and easy to update. Corrections can be made, and tracked, but I bet there are already dozens of backups on servers and services, just in case someone decides to delete it.

I love how it's extensible - stick it on a hackpad or a wiki and it quickly forms the framework for the unofficial version, which will clearly soon follow.

I love how it uses and validates all the blogging we did. This is how the history of public services should be written - in public, as it happens.

I love how it's comprehensive, but doesn't pretend to be definitive. As they say, it's 'a story'. But what a brilliant story.

Getting our ear in

I like this: "we fight the story a little bit at the beginning". This is why the start of presentations etc is so important.

'All fiction depends on what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the willing suspension of disbelief,” the reader’s decision to put the argumentative, quibbling part of his mind into neutral and go along for the narrative ride. The suspension is voluntary, though not necessarily conscious; it’s not as if you reach up and toggle a setting in your brain. Rather, as readers, we usually fight the story a little bit at the beginning, while we’re getting our ear in; then we submit, and are carried along by the flow, unless something happens to jolt us out of it.'

From the New Yorker: HOW JACK REACHER WAS BUILT

Diminished substitutes

There's much to dislike in this Safran Foer emission about the distractions of technology. All of it really. It's the usual novels versus screens stuff. This struck me particularly:

"But then a funny thing happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. It’s easier to make a phone call than to make the effort to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someone’s machine is easier than having a phone conversation – you can say what you need to say without a response; it’s easier to check in without becoming entangled. So we began calling when we knew no one would pick up. Shooting off an email is easier still, because one can further hide behind the absence of vocal inflection, and of course there’s no chance of accidentally catching someone. With texting, the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide in. Each step “forward” has made it easier – just a little – to avoid the emotional work of being present, to convey information rather than humanity."

I notice he chose to write that in a national newspaper and didn't seek me out to tell me directly. Just, I suppose, because it was easier to do that, to just type it and send it to a newspaper, rather than to do the emotional work of seeking out every single Guardian reader and telling them in person. He's not even called me up and told me. I've been in all day, I've checked all my messages. Nothing. It's disappointing.

Scotti's

Energy. Crisis.

(Take This With A Pinch of Salt: I am an adviser to Bulb, they pay me money, so I have a financial interest in you becoming their customer.)

I keep meaning to write about Bulb, I'm doing some advising for them and they're a lovely, fascinating lot. They do energy. It's 100% from renewables. And it's cheaper than most, because they're more efficient.

But, today I have a specific reason to write about them because they're doing a good thing.

If, during December, you use my referral code to switch to Bulb (or anyone's referral code, it's not just a special deal for me) they'll knock £50 off your first bill and they'll donate £50 cash to Crisis.

Simple. Straightforward. #nohashtag.

More details.

November 2016

November 2016 from russelldavies on Vimeo.

Leak before break

'Leak before break' is an engineering principle which suggests that things (like the pipes in a nuclear power station) should be designed to leak (in a detectable, fixable way) before they explode (in a catastrophic, horrible way).

That also seems to speak to some of the virtues of openness in organisation design. An organisation's blogs, twitters etc aren't leaks in themselves, but they are vectors for fixable leaks, so potential disasters can be spotted and averted before they explode in non-fixable ways.

Or something. Anyway.

Regifting

I was struck by this phrase in this piece:

"the 1854 Northcote–Trevelyan report, the Victorian-era stab at Whitehall reform described by the celebrated historian Lord Hennessy as "the greatest single governing gift of the nineteenth to the twentieth century”

It's a shame the 20th century didn't offer a similar gift to the 21st. Or, in fact, simply re-gifted.

Generally true

Sooner

Literal: why not leave the old map up?

Metaphorical: it can't come soon enough