The Efficiency Machine “Marketing is one of those complex fields of human activity, like military strategy or sex, where efficiency and effectiveness are poorly correlated” —Rory Sutherland, Advertising is in a Crisis But Not Because It Does Not Work Automation is here for those all linear, repeateitvae jobs – but will it do a good job? As consumers... More
On Context, and Meaning For all of the talk of the deficiencies of attention economy and data hoarding products it is important to state the other side of it. Those systems exist because of the actions of agents within such systems. When we accept that collective systems of communication we’re selling our attention and meaning short, but choose not... More
On Conquests Epistemological conquests–defined here as obtaining universal knowledge about a thing–are tricky in a complex world. Not because they’re impossible, but because the interconnectedness of ideas is increasingly difficult to map, & it is changing exponentially. It is like trying to balance a stack spinning plates while standing on a stack of chairs. New dimensions show... More
Lars Peter Hansen on the Need for Models The most reckless and treacherous of all theorists is he who professes to let facts and figures speak for themselves, who keeps in the background the part he has played, perhaps unconsciously, in selecting and grouping them —Alfred Marshall, 1885 Understanding that the evidence itself does not contain all the answers is crucial to an... More
AI and Context Algorithms, like all math based decision–making systems are completely blind to context. Because machines operate on averages they simply are incapable to make sense of different situations. We (humans, designers, coders) cushion them with scenarios, narratives and views on what could happen, a list of meanings a human might be seeking. A grand undertaking for... More
Parking Your Car The unlearning mind curiously travels. Wondering between thoughts, crossing over boundaries of disciplines, dogmas, or norms. In most cases, and with enough time allowed, this leads to a truly magnificent idea. An author’s first ground–breaking book, a status establishing scientific advancement, or a life–altering theatre performance 15 years in the making. The hard part is... More
Dennett on Thinking in Pictures Having turned my back on propositions, I thought, what am I going to do about this? The area where it really comes up is when you start looking at the contents of consciousness, which is my number one topic. I like to quote Maynard Keynes on this. He was once asked, “Do you think in... More
Stationary Identity A function of the attention economy (real–estate and not plumbers) is that our actions, messages, and social activity are captured in a reservoir of data . From a quantified-self perspective this can be positive, allowing us to recall places we visited, or find someone we met in a conference. But it also has a deep... More
On Collective Nudging, and Individualism If you work for yourself you’re likely to have had to articulate your interests, ambitions, goals – effectively stacking up to your agency. That might not necessarily be the case if you’re in a more structured environment, where your needs are taken care by the collective company. This could mean that in your downtime acts of... More
When Someone Else is Doing Your Job In today’s world someone else is always taking your job, just slowly. This transition – in a true to form manner – is truly agile, and not a waterfall one. So it won’t be all of a sudden. You’re not going to show up to work to realize you have nothing to to today. Over time, with new... More
Albert Ellis On Rational Living One of my favorite Thinking Allowed videos, I’d skip to 3:47 for a powerful take-away idea More
Advertising After Ads For all of the talk about the shortcomings of data hoarding (Facebook et al) I don’t know that we – as an industry– have put forward an alternative which will get people inspired, and excited to pay for. In my limited capacity I started looking at plumbers as an alternative to the remote database + proprietary database real–estate model... More
Stepping Out of Our Profession Stepping out of any known environment is scary. Especially in a commercial context, and when expected to both know what we’re talking about, and deliver results. But once we realize that the work we do is really just on ourselves, and that output is secondary we get to an incredibly agile place. If we focus... More
On Ambiguity Ambiguity is an integral dimension to the creative work, often ignored by creatives and designers. We fool ourselves to believe our perceived experience of our users, either by intuition or through interviewing the average user sample (in a limited ethnography context) We sell our deliverables against that promise of an outcome, and run out of... More
The People I Seek This is a request. A meta request. If you have been reading – and enjoying these daily posts and emails – I am asking you to invite like–minds to join the conversation. I am asking you to help spread the word by sending a note to a handful of people who too are interested in meta over... More
On Individualism If we follow the line of logic that we live in a reality of our own fashioning, & that professional agency (curiosity, interests, liminality) trumps skills (The Who–you–are–before–what–you–do model) then is follows taht we’re arriving to an incredibly independent place. When no one is average, everyone is unique – which brings intersectionality to new aspects of identity – social, professional... More
Opinions, Options and Metrics Opinions are subjective, and as such are limited in their optionality by the number of people whose reality overlaps with ours. Beyond a certain threshold the very cognitive foundation that our opinion is built on is eroded, and our opinions retract back to the world inside our head. What that means in every day life... More
Prototyping, and Scarcity Experimentation is in the core of human creativity, learning and meaning but I can’t escape the thought of the risk of wastefulness that comes from anecdotal (purposeless) making. If you’re making for making sake with no purpose and longevity (of the type that experimental marketing could be accused of) are you being wasteful with your... More
Theory U “While participating in numerous profound innovation and change projects and initiatives, I realized that while most experienced leaders actually do know these deeper levels of the U from their own experience, most organizations, institutions, and larger systems are firmly stuck on levels 1 or 2. Why? I believe it is because we lack a new... More
Adam Tooze on FT Alphachat Wonderful listen on FT, in particular the first part of it (up to 10th minute). A couple of points that really stuck with me were the concept of politics vs policy (which I will link to earlier posts on behavioral vs rational), and the comment by Tooze on the fallacy of the self assigned Davos’... More
Diversity is Uncomfortable “The most powerful forms of ideological effect are those which need no words, but merely a complicitous silence” –Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice When a group looks alike, thinks alike, comes from the same place and shares the same manners there is a silent agreement, things are understood to be a certain... More
Josef Albers on Experience Science and life are not always the best friends. They are sometimes competitors, even as are theory and practice. In school we can see this in teaching the science of nature. We as children had to learn natural history, which tried to classify or dissect the phenomena of nature. But soon we underwent the... More
David Chalmers on Consciousness, Subjectivity and Science David Chalmers speaking to Jeffery Mishlove about phenomenology, subjective experience, and of course consciousness. p.s. I recommend Chalmers’ paper on The Extended Mind, and this wonderful, long debate between Chalmers’ colleagues at NYU Gary Marcus, and Yann Lecun. More
On Design If Design innately thoughtful, has the industry move to other domains (writing, art, business strategy)? A multi–thread discussion on Twitter More
Complexity and Sensemaking in 1931 Forecasting is necessary because the modern economic system with its related social order is highly dynamic in character. What we usually call the economic machine is, in effect, a living organism which has much in common with the characteristics of living organisms in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. And behind the outward and visible change... More
Embedded Craft vs Embossed Craft When we (humans) were part of the production process (say of a shoe), we would put our touch on it, so shoe ‘a’ was different than shoe ‘b’. We might have picked a different material, finished with a different stitch, or run out of a certain sole material. The differentiation was embedded in every stage... More
Dimensionality When we say that something is multidimensional it means it has different, & unconnected variables. So when we run a query (make a decision) we flatten this multidimensional picture into a rendered state (word, opinion, decision). It hard to visualize this when it goes beyond the 3 dimensions, but consider the number of inputs and... More
Mary Catherine Bateson on Not Knowing What We Need To Know Until fairly recently, computers could not be said to learn. To create a machine that learns to think more efficiently was a big challenge. In the same sense, one of the things that I wonder about is how we’ll be able to teach a machine to know what it doesn’t know but that it might... More
Sutherland on Efficiency Marketing is one of those complex fields of human activity, like military strategy or sex, where efficiency and effectiveness are poorly correlated. In many settings, economically illogical behaviour is advantageous because it is unexpected. Likewise in relationships, humans instinctively shy away from people who are “economically efficient”. It is not that businesses do... More