McFilter: August 2015 Archives

August 31, 2015

The real power of free markets: not efficiency, but innovation and dumb luck. Can we stop only chasing efficiency now please?
How to Beat Procrastination. Not really anything new, but a timely reminder, well presented.
Solutions don’t scale, questions do. Matt Edgar with some good tips on service- and culture-design.
The End of the Internet Dream. I'm torn on this one, I don't believe in mass surveillance and censorship, but I also don't believe in bullying, doxxing... I guess it's that I'm against abuse of power, and that's a constant balance and struggle for society.
"Means Well" Technology and the Internet of Good Intentions "the precise problems of pushing technology on those that you think will need it, the elderly, when it is actually you that needs it to validate the fact you’re not a terrible child to your aging parents."
Change you can engage with. Excellent analysis of how people should be trying to encourage political change (assuming you don't want to start an actual revolution...)
By Hand & Brain. An excellent series of essays about craft, making, and culture, from a bunch of interesting people.

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You can't fix services with engagement. Excellent insight from Russell. I wonder if part of the problem is that it's easy to hire a "social media" agency to bolt on this service, whereas fixing things properly requires deeper changes to your organisation. Something I touched on a while back.
"People call him a “curmudgeon”, but they don’t really understand how much love, how much actual faith, that kind of skepticism takes.[...] Only when you fully believe in how wonderful something is supposed to be does every little daily indignity start to feel like some claw of malaise." - Leigh Alexander.
Labour through the looking glass: 15 early-morning speculations on the Corbyn surge. I haven't been following the Labour leadership contest at all, but the Corbyn-surge has filtered through into my general awareness. I don't know how likely any of Dougal's imagined future is, but it makes heartening reading, and it's good to see someone articulating a better future and one way that it could come to pass.

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The Myth of the Ethical Shopper. Ethical supply chains requires more than just voting with our wallets.
Watch and listen to 8,500 programmes on the BBC website. Great to see the BBC cataloguing all of their content, and pointing to places where it's available online too!
How much longer can food banks pick up the pieces?. The Government is consistently making us a less civilised country.
You're already dead. The last link shows why we sorely need progressive politicians with some actual beliefs. This article, sadly, does a great job of showing how far the Labour party are from anything resembling that. Which is a disgrace.
"The best way for doubters to control a questionable new technology is to embrace it, lest it remain wholly in the hands of enthusiasts who think there is nothing questionable about it.". Stewart Brand on new tech.
On Moving Lines and Network Life. Good, level-headed article from Quinn Norton calling for better security and more regulation of software, among other things.

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