Disruption is not Destruction

🔗 Nice to see ‘Disrupt’ ‘growing’

… not by size - it has been a big show for a long time - but in terms of thinking.

To my mind the revolution that drives tech startups is disruption - yet too often the result is destruction. Sometimes directly, sometimes an unintended consequence. (I Need to Write That Post.)

Beyond that, the historical challenge is that disruption and destruction seem to get conflated - even at times used interchangeably. They are not the same thing.

In short ..

Disruption can be positive or negative, acting as a catalyst for change depending on how we view it.

Destruction is the act of causing irreparable damage or making something cease to exist.

But there’s more … that other word … ‘innovation’.

Innovation is too often associated with ‘disruption’ - but that is not actually the case, though ‘disruptive innovation’ does tend to grab the headlines for radically altering industries or ways of thinking, but not all progress has to come from upheaval.

In many cases, steady, incremental improvements can lead to significant advancements without the need to completely overhaul existing systems. Building on what already works, refining processes, or enhancing current technologies can be just as powerful.

Both disruption and gradual innovation play important roles in driving progress—it’s about choosing the right approach for the context and the goals at hand.

Nobody explains this better than Geoff Moore (of Crossing The Chasm fame), who wrote Zone To Win … His framework speaks volumes.

.. and worthy of another ‘reminder’ post sometime, (A Second Post I Need to Write.) but not the point of this post, which is that this all came to mind as I was looking at the headline speakers for Disrupt this year.

Delighted to see Mary Bara headlining. To be clear, I am no gear head / auto follower - but it seems to this casual observer that she has done a much better job at navigating the shark invested waters of the global automobile industry than her major competitors. The nay sayers will argue ‘lack of innovation’. They are wrong. It’s just that her focus has been on the right side of Geoff’s matrix. Not to say that she hasn’t also been pushing on the bottom left, just not always with great success and that is where all the noise is.

/ #TwoCents


I know I know - but yes only just discovered Mike Dawes - thanks to Rick Beato …

🔗 📼 🎵Here

🔗 📼 🎵And Here

🔗 📼 🎵And Here Again

🔗 📼 🎵The Rick Beato interview.


🔗 Ribbonfarm is Retiring

Translation - I’ve moved to Substack.


🎵🔗 Music To Massage Your Ears (🍎Essentials)

Listen to the start of track 1 - not your vibe - click to next track - not your vibe - repeat

Its ONE ‘band’ from the UK that I had never heard of until a week? ago.

They have produced a LOT of albums.

They are extraordinary.


Spatial Computing Has Another Contender - AND - They Are Not Called Meta.

Stumbled across this a week or so ago and it got me to thinking - remember the 🖇️ Vision Pro?

Still don’t have one - no plan to - no personal use case (desire is apparently not a use case … who knew?)

That said, there are bundles and bundles of Business Use cases.

Anyway, turns out that 🔗 Sightful are coming out with a solution to a specific use case early 2025.

Their glasses predates Zuck’s and I would argue stand to be adopted more because they are going to be focussed on what looks like a single use case … virtual screens in confined spaces.

Yes folks - Spatial Computing for the rest of us (though to be fair - no pricing that I can see - so may still be only for the wealthy.)



Revenge Of The Nerds - Real Revenge

Back a few years ago - I raised the idea that 🖇️ ATS systems should just be banned.. Nothing changed.

Then I found this clip from The Monkees TV show that aired in the late 60s … 🖇️ The Monkees Predicting ATS software THIRTY YEARS before it appeared. Yes - 30 years is right - that’s when these things started to appear.

Of course in the intermediate time - they have just got better worse.

Even to the point of AI🖇️ Avatars Doing Job Interviews

You cannot make this stuff up!

A lot of my objections about so much of this tech is that it;

  • ends up in corporate hands
  • is misused
  • is badly misused
  • is extremely and badly abused

… and all the time never does anyone build a similar system for people. AND corporates don’t end up recruiting the best people for reasons like;

  • the best people ‘don’t have time for that’
  • the best people want to work with the best people - not bots
  • the best people don’t tune their resumes to be Keyword and SEO compliant - necessary if you stand any chance of an ATS letting you through its gates

Until now. Brilliant …. The new story is from 404 Media. I haven’t checked but - does this tickle your fancy? It does mine …

🔗 ‘I Applied to 2,843 Roles’

The solution is sitting in Github - 🔗The solution is sitting in github so I am not qualified to comment on how well this works - but I have friends.

Of course corporate HR is going to declare ‘no fair’ because their systems are going to be swamped … too bad.

I presume that someone is going to fork the code and use it to apply for contracts .. and it wont be long before their AIs contact someone on Amazon Turk and convince them to register and sign on (on their behalf) for Job Boards and Recruiter sites - so we can do the same thing there. (Of course it won’t be long before the AIs can also do that.)

We know that the retaliation is going to happen - example case - someone inside the company uses their brains and writes code to get their 5 day job done in 2 to 4 hours - and then take a second job - repeat - and a third job - repeat … what do you think the corporate does when they find out? Promote them?

My prediction - they will work out how to block this access.

Let the battle begin.


To be real clear - I am NOT an Airline Analyst. I haven’t even played one on TV. But I do tend to look around and question claims that seem spurious. (And in my time down here, I do hear a large number of claims made that do not seem to add up).

[]🔗 My take on Chris Luxon. If you don’t know the name, that’s because he’s no Jacinda Arden .. though he holds her office in Aotearoa](https://substack.philpin.com/p/was-he-any-good)

Written in response to a piece suggesting that Luxon’s not doing a good job. Why? My point is that despite the press, I’m not sure he ever did a good job.


Just listened to Gilbert’s 2024 release - he’s 78 for goodness sake. Not bad - but the classics are definitely not improved .. like the original 🔗 🎵 Nothing Rhymed .. always a place in my heart for this one. (I always liked his singles - but it was my sister that introduced me to the albums (my natural musical habitat.)


Just for kicks I signed up for a month of 🥐 🔗 ..

A buttery smooth app for cross posting to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads.

Big benefit for me is that I can add multiple accounts for the same service - useful as we start to push out The Future Found

AND

When I send I can choose which accounts it sends to.

Next job (request?) - as I publish to MicroBlog or LinkedIn or Facebook or …. have that post appear in Croissant ready for me to decide where I want to cross post. #Maybe.



You might not recognize the words - 🔗🎵 but you will certainly recognize the song. Superb re-imagination.

How did i get here?
Sitting on this spinning sphere
When will I leave here
We know death is always near
I try to understand but answers don’t come easily
Friends always deceiving me
Is this what life’s supposed to be?
Human animals
We roam the earth in search of blood
Hope for humanity?
I don’t think there ever was
We’re in perpetual war, and that’s the only law
Can I change it? I doubt it
So I write songs about it
I was young once but now I’ve grown old
Right in front of your еyes you’ve seen my life unfold
I had no choicе as I became the underdog’s voice
A young black kid… look what the fuck I did!
When I’m gone there’ll be someone to carry on
We can give in, give up, or we can stay strong
How accepting of the bullshit we’ve all become
This whole world is… comfortably numb
Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?
Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?

You’ve got a TV, a computer, so you don’t care
A roof, some clothes, some food
That’s right, it’s all there
Lock yourself in your house, try to forget about
The millions dyin' from wars, starvation and drought
You’ve got your own problems - yes, we all do
Nobody is free from stress, not him, or me, or you
But still we judge each other, we want to pick a fight
In the streets we kill each other, each and every weeknight
I don’t want no drama but I carry a gun
I don’t want no problems but they’ll probably come
So we get high to wash away the pain
Self-medication, but that shit is all done in vain
We think that we can hide away from the misery
You can close your eyes but still can plainly see
There’s nowhere to run…
You’re just comfortably numb

Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?
Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?

I spent half my life just trying to survive
And the other half trying to keep you all alive
For some reason I still care
I’ve done my dirt
It’s amazing that i’m still here
There’s true evil out there, I’ve been trying to warn you
You could meet the devil himself, then what you gonna do?
No time to pray, no chance to run
Listen… ‘cause I’ve been on both sides of the gun
As you stand before me we’re all here as one
We gotta come together or our chances are none
Maybe I’m just a dreamer, too many obstacles
The though of humans coexisting, that’s impossible
Better to stay numb, live in denial
We’re all going to hell and we did it to ourselves
Too much religious beef, too much racist shit
And if there is a God we probably make him sick

Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?
Hello… is anybody out there?
Can anybody hear me?



Even Android users can’t have nice things.

🔗 Our Android App is Frozen in Carbonite


It’s only getting worse …

🔗 AI Avatars Are Doing Job Interviews Now

For the longest time I have argued against the thoughtless deployment of ATS systems in corporations.

Downside for corporates - totally miss the nuance of people and their ‘particular sets of skills’ because they are over simplifying what they think they are looking for.

Downside for people - your resume and cover letter are no longer enough - you know need to think about tuning yourself with keywords to ensure you are fully ‘Search Engine Optimised’.

The whole thing is just one giant mess that benefits nobody.

Me previously …


An excellent read.

🔗 AI - A Means to an End or a Means to Our End?

So excellent, I thought I would share some extracts.


🔗 Wearisome and Dissipating - by Stowe Boyd - Work Futures

It’s interesting to me that leaders of companies who have disrupted entire industries by “breaking the box” and solving problems in new ways are so committed to “doing work” the same way it’s been done for the last 50 years.

💬 Nicole Rivers