Garbage Language

We need to stop it.

“We’re waiting on specs for the San Francisco installation. Can you parallel-path two versions?”

Good grief ... I think Molly Young is channelling me.

... at the very bottom, customer service. Which, by the way, has been rechristened “customer support” or “customer experience” at most companies — as though the word service might remind the college graduates recruited for these roles that they will in fact spend their days pacifying irritable consumers over phone, chat, text, and email. 

As you know - Language is one of the People First pillars.

I have no reason to write more on this article - it only becomes a block to you reading it yourself.

🚧 Data Is Being Used To Screw Us

This popped into a thread that I am part of ...

[www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=63)&v=z-_ARP8m4Fg&feature=emb_logo
Yeshimabeit Milner

A thread that caused 'Friend of People First' - Adrian Gropper to write;

A talk that argues that most of the big data is being used to screw us and mentions data trusts as a possible solution. Data trusts are an immature concept but worth considering because it's one approach to decentralizing governance. Until we figure out data governance principles that are transparent and contextual to specific communities we should limit data aggregation by default and focus on personal agents and other fiduciaries.

Adrian Gropper

It is interesting because on that very same day I received these words from another 'Friend of People First' and occasional colleague Daniel Szuc after he received my newsletter declaring Data is Energy.

Energy is energy.
Climate is a result of energy misused.
Environment is the outcome.
What are the impacts on our environment today, inside people and in the outside environment people live in?
What contributes to the health or toxicity of the environment?
Data, understood deeply, should be used to contribute to the healthy environment ... yet ... how is it being used today?

Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong

The answer, of course, is exactly what Adrian expressed above.

It is being used to screw us.

Ian Grigg On Identity

[youtu.be/2ITif1OBV...](https://youtu.be/2ITif1OBVX8)

I think that is the opportunity and in five years time we'll know whether we got the mega-corporations holding my identity or whether we managed to take it back.

Ian Grigg - October 2015.

The five years are just about up and I think if the 'megacorps' have not won - they are about to. Is it too late?

Three years ago he wrote: Identity is an edge protocol, and not a nodal protocol. (pdf)

Fuck You. Pay Me.

www.youtube.com/watch

Imagine, turning around to a lawyer, an accountant, a doctor and telling them that they weren't going to be paid.

Dear Lawyer

I listened to your advice - but I am not going to use it - so I don’t owe you.

Wrote no one ever.

So why does that happen to designers, creators, writers et al?

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.

Data?

Data?
Data Is Energy!

Read More →

”Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

www.theguardian.com

Thomas Keneally’s 2020s vision: We must abandon the language of the market to reclaim our humanity

Identity - it might not be what you think it is … this week’s People First Newsletter considers the full meaning of ‘Identity’.

Identity

Always revealing differences. Often adding new facets. 
To know the reflection is to understand the subject.

Read More →

We must abandon the language of the market to reclaim our humanity

”In the last 30 years we have been transmuted from pilgrims, patients and students to become, as our primary identification, consumers and clients.”

HumanIT, the people’s OS.

Language. A People First Pillar.

Measure the economy by the Dow? Buttigieg says ‘no’.

What a concept! Must invite him to ‘#PeopleFirst

Not yet watched it - but I know I will - and if the book is any indicator - should be VERY good.

Shoshana Zuboff

Politics In Business

The New York Times : Yellow or Blue? In Hong Kong, Businesses Choose Political Sides on the 19th January contains this quote ...

Families and businesses have cleaved, sometimes forcefully, between those who believe Beijing must be compelled to carry out promised reforms and those who worry that the democracy crusade is destroying Hong Kong’s reputation as a stable financial capital.

I thought of the UK and the US ... and made two modifications

For The USA

Families and businesses have cleaved, sometimes forcefully, between those who believe Washington must be compelled to carry out promised reforms and those who worry that the democracy crusade is destroying The USA's reputation as a stable financial capital.

For The UK

Families and businesses have cleaved, sometimes forcefully, between those who believe London must be compelled to carry out promised reforms and those who worry that the democracy crusade is destroying The UK's reputation as a stable financial capital.

People: Sylvester

“They come for three months - they stay for four years - and I welcome that. That’s how we learn. They see us up close and personal and we see them. A lot of countries that they come from have very different governments, with different rules. We get to learn about each without the filter of what they are told. I wouldn’t say that when they leave we fully understand each other’s cultures, but we are surely better off than we would have been if we hadn't.”

“We bring people in from all over the world, staff and customers. So, why would we treat anyone differently? Them, Us, Staff, Customers, Family 
 each one of us is part of another’s world. And I mean all of us.”

“I don’t know much about those large companies you hear about in the news. You could fit our entire community into one of their office blocks. They have their ways. We have ours. So we’re different. Except we’re not. None of us are. They just haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Turns out, we have more in common with ‘foreigners’ - like you” (he smiles and points his finger at me) “than some of the people from our own country. Turns out that the ones that are just here to 'party' are the odd ones out. That’s why we came up with the 'Silly Bugger' rule.”

“It goes like this. When you come here, you can work and you can party. But that’s on your time. If you play 'silly bugger', there is no second chance. You are out on the next boat. That’s how we build and strengthen our community. Everybody is welcome until they make themselves unwelcome.”

“Maybe that’s something else those big companies could learn from us. If they did, we wouldn’t charge. That’s another thing - we don’t charge to learn - learning makes us all better.”

“There is no harm in our criticizing foreigners, if only we would also criticize ourselves. In other words, the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little more of the old humility.”

G.K. Chesterton

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.

Edmund Burke 200 years ago:

”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

”The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”

”Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

.. and many more.

What a better way to celebrate data privacy day than reading the latest newsletter from People First where I connect the dots between Climate Change, Supertramp, Big Tobacco, Technology, Sun Tzu and The Red Hot Chili Peppers .. and not always tenuously !!!