Identity

In 1997 I was hired by Dresdner Kleinwort Benson to run their Euro, Y2K and Regulatory Minimum Requirements Programmes. Three classic “mandatory” projects that engendered classic responses: everyone agreed the projects needed to be done, everyone had an opinion on the how and what of each project, but nobody wanted the job of actually getting...

Soon everyone on earth will be connected. It’s over. People are getting connected. Things are getting connected. Whole communities are getting connected. And when communities get connected, other things begin to happen. They become markets. Entire markets in themselves. And at the same time participants in larger markets. It’s fractal, small pieces exhibiting the same...

Soon everyone on earth will be connected. It’s over. People are getting connected. Things are getting connected. Whole communities are getting connected. And when communities get connected, other things begin to happen. They become markets. Entire markets in themselves. And at the same time participants in larger markets. It’s fractal, small pieces exhibiting the same...

When you try and describe the internet (and, for that matter, the Web) what metaphors do you tend to use? Is it a “series of tubes” to you? A place? A river or ocean? Something organic, living, evolving? None of the above? All of the above? As I began to write this, I thought I’d...

A few days ago, stimulated by the level of recent noise on the internets about open and closed and apps and HTML5 and walled gardens and governance models and why someone hates <pick one from Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/the world/themselves>, I wrote a post asserting that it’s over, asserting that the waves won’t be turned back, that the...

Cartoon courtesy the ’09 archives of the LA Free Press How much do you make? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Are you now or have you ever been…? Are you aware of the fact…? I have here before me… [...]information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim...

Little Milton. That’s the nickname given to Gerald Bostock by the village of St Cleve, after he’d been presented with a poetry award when he was about 8. We’re given to understand that the award was revoked after he was heard uttering the word “g—-r” during a live television broadcast. [I'm not going to spoil...

Have you read Haydn Shaughnessy? If you’re interested in the social enterprise, you should. I haven’t yet read his recent book, The Elastic Enterprise, but I will: I intend to read it as I cross the Atlantic on my way to SXSW later this week. (I’m speaking there on the Saturday, on Massively Multiplayer Work,...

Serendipity is a wondrous thing.  Yesterday, as I did my leisurely trawl through the three hundred or so people I read regularly, I came across Tom Foremski’s intriguing post. Is Skype A Social Network? That set me off on a gentle, aimless wander on what makes a network social. Then, a little while later, I...

According to knowyourmeme, poker face is a “4pane exploitable series illustrating mostly awkward and sometimes embarrassing social situations, who always responds with a blank expression and a caption that reads “poker face”. This post is not about the meme. In other news, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta had a hit song with that title. Which gives...

Some of you may have seen this news report already. As the BBC says “India’s Calcutta to be painted blue“. I was born there. Lived there for 23 years unbroken. And still consider myself a Calcuttan. [Enough to have named this blog after it]. So the story mattered to me. Yet my first instinct was...

There was a time that musicians produced collections of music called albums. A time when every song in the collection so published was worth listening to. A time when musicians even tried to create some sort of continuity, some sense of belonging, some coherence between the songs on the  albums. Sometimes they called them concept...