Dispatches

This is a different Dispatch than the usual, instead of an article about a specific topic, I’m using these emails to launch something for members: a Discord server. For a while now, I’ve been wondering if I should, and how. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been active in a few of these communities and that has resulted in four different results.  Keep reading →

The founding Director of the University of Michigan’s new Urban Technology program, on the growing importance of technology in cities, data, architecture and design, feedback loops, generalists, and futures.  Keep reading →

A couple of months ago this Dispatch might have been called ‘WTF Web3?’ Today, it should be quite a bit more informed. Still, I’m in no way any kind of specialist on the topic, just spending a bit more time exploring, which is what I’d like to share here. Just a list of thoughts and things to read.  Keep reading →

A few technologies pointing in a direction I find intriguing, and so associating them loosely with a concept the concept of cyborgs, which has been used in various differing ways.  Keep reading →

The term Artificial Intelligence needs to be reframed, Augmented Intelligence needs to be explored more deeply, and so do more varied perspectives and other forms of intelligence in nature.  Keep reading →

On synthetic reality, the corruption of the word Metaverse, and what is actually valuable and intriguing to track, despite the VCs and NFTs.  Keep reading →

I started thinking that you could go more granular, and consider tasks, sprints, agile, kanban, different kinds or timespan for strategy, etc. I started wondering where business intelligence might go in there. Could this be framed as a “time stack”? Different parts or definitions of the organization being on different time horizons.  Keep reading →

I realized they can also be seen almost as steps in a process: look at a broad landscape of topics, synthesize what you see, pick the most important. I like the term generalist, it’s one of the best descriptions of my career(s) and also a good representation of something I see as vital: being able to understand different domains and translate between them.  Keep reading →

Jon Rogers explains how designers, smaller firms, and artists can create and re-orient products’ plots to provide citizens with more agency in their use of technology. As told to Peter Bihr in the course of an interview for his Getting Tech Right project.  Keep reading →

Although I use various topic names to describe the newsletter, tweaking once in a while, re-framing how I present it, basically it’s always “here’s stuff I found interesting.” And yet I’m also always trying to determine (guess) what readers might enjoy, how each issue can make sense, and to find the overlap of where my curiosity leads and what might be more generally engaging.  Keep reading →

This month’s topic was all researched and ready to be written, even though I was finding it hard to line things up in an interesting manner. Then I happened on a tweet, quoted below, and decided to write about what that brought to mind, and ended up going more personal than usual at the same time.  Keep reading →

I’ve recently come to realize that a good number of the articles I’ve shared in the last year could, when contemplated from a certain angle, be grouped together in a way I hadn’t planned on. I noticed that there’s definitely a “just enough” aspect to many of them.  Keep reading →

The remote work experiment has been ongoing, though some have gone back to workspaces, many are still largely working from home, and although the numbers have gone down, there’s still a good percentage of home workers who would prefer to keep this way of work most days, as long as kids are in school.  Keep reading →

If you’ve been following the newsletter beat, you’ve probably heard that the buzzword of the last couple of months has been “bundle.” As in bundling together a few newsletters under one price, to feed off each others’ reach and prepare for the much feared newsletter fatigue. Here are somes things I’d like to push back on or expand, and a few other options.  Keep reading →

Having been a lifelong book and magazine tsundokist (not an actual word), having co-edited a print magazine, and now writing Sentiers, I’m always paying attention to various publishing models and experiments. With Walden Pond popping up a few weeks back, then Robin Sloan launching his Sloanstarter, and finally following an exchange on Twitter about zines, I changed themes for this Dispatch and decided to share some of the publication formats and concepts that have drawn my attention over the last few years.  Keep reading →

By now I’m sure you’re aware of the expression “software is eating the world” so I won’t dwell on the topic—it’s clearly happening—except to say the one of the interesting things unfolding in that process is that more and more “things” become digital or have a digital version, thus becoming more easily interoperable. Tools, methods, practices, skills become, at least superficially or in part, compatible from one domain to the other.  Keep reading →

It’s a less-performative version of blogging - more of a captain’s log than a broadcast blog. The distinction will come down to how you blog - some people blog in much the same way. For me however blogging is mostly performative thinking and less captain’s log. So I am looking for a space to nurture, edit in real time and evolve my thinking.  Keep reading →

Regardless, Ballard has been appearing left and right as I’ve been following and reading more futurists and discovering new scifi authors so he’s been repeatedly on my radar over the last few years. It feels like we’ve transitioned from “Gibsonian” to “Ballardian” in describing the current era. Since we seem to be living in Ballardian times, what better topic for the first Dispatch after this past March “decade”?  Keep reading →

Aside from the one topic on everyone’s mind, a related one is something I’ve spent some time paying attention to: distributed or remote work. As country after country and company after company decides to have people work from home, how to best do it while staying sane is a very timely question. Here are a few ideas.  Keep reading →

To feed a discussion about a potential get-together, a client recently asked me to gather some interesting event formats. After asking for pointers on Twitter, I was asked by a number of people to share my findings. I repurporsed some things from the report, fished some out of my “archives” and decided to first share all of that here with members.  Keep reading →