🔗 WWW
There are a lot of links out to different parts of the web on this site. I try to mark them all so they get listed here.
🎈010/366 | ✍️ Rewriting Future History
🔗 Interesting piece from Om today.
I think he’s right about that up there. What I am not so sure about is this down here.
Why?
Because it will bring all those ‘EEJITS’ out of the woodwork, who maintain that ’Steve’ did everything and Tim has done nothing, isn’t innovative, riding the coat tails etc …
(Count me in the camp of the people that believe that had Tim NOT done what Tim did when he did it, that there wouldn’t even be a significant enough Apple to do what he is doing now.)
Not being a Redditer, I had never heard of this account - and certainly no idea of its truth - but ….
🎈008/366 | ❓ Solving The Right Problem
Today’s Sketchplanations resonated, even though I had never heard of the ‘problem’ being ‘🔗 The XY Problem
Back at Group Partners we would help people ‘avoid solving the wrong problem really well’
Others talk about ‘peeling back the onion to get to the root cause’ (think a doctor treating your hip to solve your back pain), etc etc.
Whatever it is known as, this is what anyone should do to solve a problem. Never treat the symptom.
If you don’t agree, comment below.
If you do agree - do you have other names you use?
🎈007/366 | 🚣♀️ The Pace of Change
A couple of days ago I wrote a little (very little) about Stewart Brand’s 🖇️ Pace layer. It’s worth clicking through - not just to my short piece, but in turn the links in that post.
Still - to the point.
Andy Hamilton dropped a post on LinkedIN a couple of days ago referencing an Australian report called ‘Barriers to collaboartion and commercialization’ asking if there were lessons that can be learned fro New Zealand. And so ‘the people’ weighed in - with the inevitable group waxing lyrical about business and government working hand in hand to innovate and become world leaders in ….
Pipe dreams - and ‘Pace Layers’, illustrated above explain why.
The model was developed by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno of all people. A quick study will reveal why government involvement in innovation is flawed. If you are still missing the challenge comes down to the
The order of a healthy civilization. The fast layers innovate; the slow layers stabilize. The whole combines learning with continuity.
💬 Stewart Brand
It reminds me of something 🔗 Venkatesh Rao wrote about many years ago - and which I in turn referenced in my 🔗 book a couple of years ago.
Bottom Line
I have always had a fundamental problem with government being joined at the hip with business. In principle, it sounds lovely. It can work. It does work … but not if you want to be fast, innovative, different, leading edge, using new technologies - all of these things are not part of a government’s DNA - the pace layer model reveals why it won’t work.
Whatever speed government works at, it still wont be fast enough for business and if you slow down business to more readily accommodate government, then others will beat you to market.
Just three case studies out of the hundreds if not thousands just in the software industry; Uber, AirBNB and Facebook.
And don’t get me started on Tesla, The Boring Compnay, SpaceX, X, xAI, Neuralink and the rest of the ‘Musk Suite.
Friend 1: Do not watch ‘🔗 🎬 Leave The World Behind’.
Friend 2 : I’ll watch it - I like to make my own mind up, not just listen to what others think.
Me : Cool - have you seen Barbie?
Friend 2 : Oh no. I don’t like the messaging behind that one.
Me : Messaging? What about making ….. oh never mind.
🎈004/366 | 🏢 Demonstrating The Pace Layer
Over the break, I had the fortune (not committing to whether that’s good or bad, since that is a whole different story) to visit Martinborough in the Wairarapa - one of New Zealand’s wine regions. It’s a cute little town that includes a single ‘supermarket’.
On one visit I noticed two photographs on the wall - the building from the early part of the last century, photographed in 1906 ….
… and a second of a different building (same site) in 1949.
As I took the photographs of the photographs, I commented to a couple passing by and watching me that it was a shame that a beautiful building such as the original was replaced by the ‘flat pack’.
I assumed that some bright spark had decided to pull the old one down in favor of the ‘modern, sleek lined building’.
Never assume.
Yes the old one was pulled down - but after a major earthquake rendered part of it flat and part of it unsafe - and I get why you would want to modernize and I know why the designs changed - but that’s not what this is about.
What it’s about is that the photographs and conversation reminded me of a 🔗 recent post from Stowe Boyd that referenced Stewart Brand’s book 🔗 How Buildings Learn which in turn built on the ideas of British architect Frank Duffy.
Buildings aren’t made out of glass, concrete and stone: they’re made out of time, layers of time.
💬 Frank Duffy
Brand’s model is clear;
… and the two images reveal it in action. No images from the inside of the store - though for the Kiwi’s amongst you, I can say that the Martinborough FourSquare is the nicest (and largest) FourSquare I have ever visited. (For Brits, think of a FourSquare as something like one of those Tesco or Safeways Mini-marts we find in ever increasing numbers around the British Isles. Think of the Martinborough Foursquare as more akin to a mid sized Waitrose. For American readers … Wholefoods? High end Safeways?
All that said - look at Brand’s model carefully and consider buildings you know and how they relate.
🎈003/366 | 💬 A New Purpose
Interesting to read 🔗 this from Om. I definitely did not feel that all of last year, but definitely in the past couple of months, something in me has been coming together. It’s as if bits of Lego have been suddenly snapping together, around writing, my work programmes and the connected thinking.
It’s not just the new year. There’s a fundamental shift I am feeling.
The question is whether it is an aberration, or something that will translate to something that will stay for part of the journey.
I think it’s the latter.
LATER
Funny .. as I published this post, someone sent me this;
Every time I read 🔗 A Camera Not An Engine by Venkatesh Rao I found myself highlighting more and more - so that it was very nearly all highlight! So - I cut some back and have published to my Readwise.
Next job if I get round to it .. annotations.
🎈002/366 | ♟️ Is There Planning In Strategy❓
In one of my work programmes there is an ongoing debate around planning and strategy .. one of the team going as far as to suggest that ‘strategic planning’ is an oxymoron (my words). This seems to nicely channel an aspect of that thinking.
This particular quote
is taken from 🔗 this article, which in turn arrived with me from discussions over at the UNdaunted. You’ll be hearing more about them over the next year.)
I think it also plays into the old adage (I paraphrase) ..
“All plans are a waste … but planning is essential.”
For me. I think there is truth in this line of thought.
What do you think?
🎈001/366 | 📸 This Is What I Know
There’s a 🔗 Stonehenge in New Zealand.
Spent a lovely afternoon there today.
If you have interest its 🔗 three words are ‘enable.improves.preperations’.
.. and so a new year begins and the Daily Stoic … as a publishing event … ends.
A variation on a theme will be forthcoming .. inspired by this thought from a Daily Stoic entry on 🖇️ December 22nd
Meanwhile …
Happy New Year
Dems and Repubs have a lot more in common than we might think.
In US politics … the two prime parties are symbolized by a 🔗 Donkey and Elephant.
The curious thing is that 🔗 Thomas Nast created both the original satirical cartoons.
- Same guy.
- Drew cartoons that dinged both parties.
- Both parties adopted their own cartoon …
These days they’d sue him!
Fuck TikTok.
Fuck Russell Brand.
🔗 TikTok users including Russell Brand given special status, messages show.
Just in case you get too happy absorbing 🔗 Reasons To Be Cheerful, now you can 🔗 Cry Once a Week.
It’s all about balance.
I have saved 🔗 Layers of Time: Pace Layers of Work by Stowe Boyd to read properly later - but it triggered some other works I have been absorbing recently how the our digital worlds have been shaping our physical world for decades - and it is only accelerating.
Careful What It Says In The Small Print
I was meant to be picking up a car from 🔗 Europcar this afternoon - for a one month reservation.
I just tried to change that reservation and pick it up early tomorrow.
Lady on the call center said no problem - and was about to hit the confirmation button … but as she was talking I hear that the new price was DOUBLE the old price.
DOUBLE!!!
When I booked car, the agent said that there would be no problem and no charge to change the booking if I need to.
I relayed this to this booking agent.
Absolutely she said, it would normally cost you 6 dollars to change the booking - and we are waiving that fee … but the contract also says that if the cost of the rental changes, we have to reflect that change in the new contract.
New job this afternoon … go down to Auckland Airport and pick up the car rental.
🔗 Minister pulls brakes on cycling and walking initiatives.
Seriously? It costs THAT much?
Meanwhile ‘my man Dana’ has been banging on about the US propensity for cars of the large and heavy variety forever … not to mention the battery decisions being made - necessary apparently - because of the weight and size factor of these vehicles.
This just today for example.
While the Internet and iPhone came on faster, these were internal revolutions. They didn’t change the world around us. Mass EV adoption will.
🔗 🎵 Car Drivers Torment a City with Celine Dion Songs
Protest songs are everywhere - except on TV or radio.