One Man's Notes

Your data is the fuel for parties you're not invited to

The Global Economy Runs on Parties You’re Not Invited To:

As went the ad business, so will go the rest of the economy: The robots may take over — but for a certain class of moneyed titan, the beaches will always remain topless, the drinks bottomless and high-end schmoozing will never die.

Disturbing look at how the internet didn’t dis intermediate elites — it just allowed a whole new class to develop.


Teaching 4 year olds to use saws. 👌🏻


I find this troubling. We can no longer rely on Google being a gateway to the older parts of the web. How to Find Old Websites That Google Won’t Show


Time to get moving on mobility — for the planet’s sake…


Yesterday’s view…


Pride-ful.


Many PostIts died to bring us this strategy…


The philistines in this hotel have turned the coffee machine off for the night. HOW VERY DARE THEY.


It’s all glamour in the consultancy business, I can tell you…


Looking lovely in the evening sun… 🌻


Getting a bit dry round here…


Tide’s out…


This will probably get me into trouble, but I’m quite excited by Jony Ive leaving Apple. He’d clearly run out of things to say about computer design, and is interested in exploring new fields.

That opens up space for a new vision to come forward for Apple.


Blimey. Ive leaving Apple to form his own firm - but Apple will be one of his first clients.


This really was not the plan for this afternoon.


The street where I grew up.


Hello, Edinburgh.


I have a suspicion that a child may have used this seat before me…


I have got to bring my tab habit under control. There’s no point opening all these damn things, unless I’m going to sit and read them.


The New Wilderness

No two companies have done more to drag private life into the algorithmic eye than Google and Facebook. Together, they operate the world’s most sophisticated dragnet surveillance operation, a duopoly that rakes in nearly two thirds of the money spent on online ads. You’ll find their tracking scripts on nearly every web page you visit. They can no more function without surveillance than Exxon Mobil could function without pumping oil from the ground.

This is a fundamental, unavoidable truth of both their business models.


Finished drafting tomorrow’s newsletter for my paying subscribers. Feeling good about it (although slightly guilty that this is not going on the open web. But then, this is a topic I’ll return to on my blog, I’m sure).


Morning office:


Is messenger app interoperability feasible without destroying encryption?


Warning for highly polarising politics…

I poked into why #notjewish was trending on Twitter, and why an account I had no awareness of had blocked me - and found some really simple answers - with complex consequences


Interesting discovery while booking a trip: it’s no longer safe to assume budget hotel chains are substantially cheaper than more upmarket offerings.