startups – mil's page

definition, design philosophy, rationale

but i do i make sense (in worlds of incense)

My latest #poem on #siliconvalley’s corrupting choices, plus a link to the new online #whitepaper on #newlean … and other observations …

i'm incensed to be honest 
and yet not:
no gorgeous odour drifts like a breeze
of glorious glees 
nor assails plentifully my senses 

but incensed i remain even so
at how rich people remain rich 
by plundering our brains
and attacking our better selves  
whilst all we had been asking for was this:

to be human to the max 
to enjoy being in the sack even 
with someone who hadn't met us online 
before we began face-to-face to vibe ...
... who hadn't had us sussed 

and hadn't trussed us up mentally 
so that they saw us way earlier 
than we ever saw them 
via that den of thievery
that is silicon valley since forever and all

because the real problem now 
is that surveillance to this max 
which we conduct on each other 
and use to blather and gossip about  
so that the outcomes 

become attempted suicides 
and depressions of the most revealing 
and the permanent anxieties 
of living a life 
as if it were a death on legs 

that's what big tech has brought us to 
and that's why i'm incensed as i am
and angry so very much 
that the human touch even that 
is now a monetisable gap 

that an elon and satya 
can invade and intrude with their choices 
to make the kind of technologies that hurt 
and be leaders of the worst 
instead of wanting to be peers of the first 

yes i am incensed in the western sense:
angry to the very maximum 
and it seems my words fall 
on barren grinds
of coffees never exchanged 

yet in a more eastern sense 
i smell your comprehension growing 
and see you showing 
an embrace approaching  
to my ideas of #intuitionvalidation 

and it's this incense i sense 
of the flowers and the astringent 
and the spices of natural inclinations
which i now turn to 
as i turn my back on the west i was born to

because it's here i find my pals of thought 
where nothing needs repeating 
and nothing needs reasserting 
and all is agreement and fulsome assent 
and that's what it's all about:

knowing how your place
is no longer where you are 
nor has ever been perhaps 
and maybe it's never been so 
and just time ... just time to go"

definition, design philosophy, rationale

“upskilling” human beings in the ways of the machine … again? i don’t THINK so

introduction

i just got a message from microsoft (linkedin) which asked me to consider and/or explain how what i was about to post (what you see below in the screenshots) related to my work or professional role.

why nudge in this way

is this a stealthy attempt to remove the ambiguities of #arts-based thinking patterns from contaminating the baser #chatgpt-x instincts and what they scrape?

more than personally, quite intellectually i think it’s wrong — in a world which needs lateral and nonconformist thinking — to define, a priori, what a thinker who wishes to shape a better business should use as a primary discourse.

because this discourse may include how much we follow or no the traditional way of framing information: where we state what we will say, say it, and then summarise it, we fit the needs of machines and people trained to think like them.

art should be used to communicate in any forum

‘truth is, when we choose a precise ambiguity (one forged out of the arts — not the confusions — of deep communication), where such ambiguity and the uncertainty it generates may in itself be a necessary part of the communication process’s context — and even content — what value ever is added by telling the speaker and/or writer they are ineffective?

in any case, the public will always have the final vote on this: and if you prefer to communicate in such ways and be not read, why not let it happen?

why choose this kind of nudge to upskill writers in the ways of the machine?

using automated machines to do so, too …!

so what do YOU think? what DO you?

me, what follows is what i want. what no one in tech wants to allow. because i’m not first to the starting-line: i’m last. they decided it didn’t suit their business models decades ago. i decided i didn’t agree. and i still don’t. and neither should you.

on making a systemically distributed intelligence and genius of all human beings … not just an elite

aside, definition

why NOT to thrive too?

yesterday evening was ace. where i’m staying someone new came for a week. i was told he was #finnish, and was asked by the host if i could hang around to receive.

it was downtime for me yesterday: i was needing some respite from all the thoughts i’d been having.

the new guy is young, brainy, sharp, kindly — and not #finnish at all, but #spanish. i spent the whole long evening speaking in #castellano with him, and it was fab: i realise how much i know about #spanish culture, and the bad memories just refused to surface on being with a good person from the country which i see now i’d also created so many good memories out from whilst there.

i also saw my #teaching and #enabling #skillsets kicking in. it was really interesting, communicating with him about our differing and similar perceptions of the worlds that overlapped around us — and then again, the worlds we each enjoyed which didn’t overlap. (as a by-the-by, and after the vibes of last night, i’d now like to explore mentoring quite seriously, if anyone who might facilitate this is reading these lines. i listen well face-to-face in a way maybe my writing gives lie to. and i make and communicate #polymath-style connections quite robustly and vigorously. both could serve newly arrived others to #sweden really well.)

he had actually been to #finland quite recently. and i have been in both #sweden and the #uk on and off since last december; that is, just before christmas.

‘much to praise in #scandinavia. very much both of us liked already.

we covered a lot of ground: he’s here on a post-#spanish master internship at #karolinska. and i told him of the 10,000 startups in #stockholm. and i explained how ignorant of another world i’d been all these years. and i said how moving from one country to another might not only be a question of building on existing abilities but also recognising the job and work roles would have not only differing descriptors but maybe even different goals and desired outcomes: even different philosophies.

we also spoke of the importance of philosophy more widely in everything — here, especially #tech (he studies and works in the field of #biology): worlds we all these days find ourselves inhabiting.

and finally he helped me satisfactorily resolve a conundrum which had led a friend of my father’s back in the 1960s to commit suicide. if i remember rightly, the friend had been a biochemist: and was involved in the study of cellular will — that is, whether at cellular level the idea and fact of free will can be detected.

it pushed my father’s friend over the edge; the philosophical challenge being that maybe whatever you chose to do would be impulsed inevitably by something external to yourself. no free will, then … anywhere, ever, at all.

young ismael, the spanish intern and researcher’s name, reminds me of fernando torres just a little bit. and he defo scored a goal or two when he explained to me the fact that a healthy cell to remain healthy can neither be #dependent nor #independent. it suddenly laid it out clearer than clear for me the reality that in a completely different time had served to kill my father’s friend: cells do indeed have free will; and they exert it to survive … even if nothing else. and what they must choose in order to survive in this way is what gordon brown said once about #interdependence: it’s the only thing worth pursuing, tbh. neither needy nor downright may you in all intellectual sincerity be. simply conscious of the collective you form a part of which always, always must be posited around the actions of individuals.

and so if cells, why not us?

and if us in order to survive, why not in order to thrive too?