Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Dare I mention the nightmare I had with my scooter with the ULEZ fine.
Which? include the thing I discovered, which is cloned plates, but lets get back to the problem of ANPR. Easily solved by having a human look at the case not a computer. 3% is a lot of people.
For the longest time I have avoided using Meta’s Whatsapp.
Recently its become more difficult with more and more services using Whatsapp as there default way to communicate. Luckily my partner has become a bit of a human bridge to some Whatsapp groups.
To be really clear this is not good! I’m very aware of the mental load women shoulder in society and relationships. I struggle with it but we have talked about it and how I do a lot in our relationship too.
I am finding it almost inconceivable that WhatsApp has become (de-factor) something like public infrastructure. It was refreshing to see a ton of people using signal, the fediverse and heck email to swap details…
Which leads me the PublicSpaces conference, where people who strategise, build and encourage; a future which is democratic and fair for everyone. Unlike a lot of conferences I have been to, this had the actual builders alongside policymakers, all considering how this can actually practically work.
Usually PublicSpaces is 2 days of conference but this year there was a extended day of conference on Friday (added the open social awards) and also a series of unconferences, social events and workshops the day before and the day afterwards. We were fully immersed and perfectly created.
Robin Bjon’s opening keynote set the mood, I especially loved this quote from Audre Lorde…
But I do have hope. To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair—despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless.
Then in the afternoon, during a panel which I was chairing came the European social stack. It was all live streamed so you will see the chaos which unfolded and myself trying to manage it (I felt I did a reasonable job)
Ultimately the European social stack is an attempt to standardise a stack of open social platforms and private messaging. Based around core principles of… Autonomy, diversity, decentralisation, democracy, open source and more.
But this isn’t some blind manifesto, this has aims which are defined. It’s also not about being in Europe but rather the values, and represents a 3rd way between the other super powers vision of the internet.
Later on the same day during the Social web awards, Rudy from Black Sky algorithms gave ActivityPub some props in his talk, similar to Robin from Eurosky. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was impressed the two break off skies (Eurosky & Blacksky) were positioning themselves in a very different space than the big mainstream Bluesky. Reminding me, I should just move off Bluesky…
His talk was framed as a talk with dangerous ideas and honestly there was a lot of excellent ideas. For example I was looking into Blacksky cash a while back and it’s something which takes an old traditional way of sharing wealth and puts it in the modern world; but relies on strong community and democracy.
It feels like the protocol wars are cooling between Activitypub and ATProto. But better still is the formulation of a social stack, which is logical and still gives plenty of room for creativity and experimentation without taking liberties with people’s data, attention and democracy.
Looking forward to open social becoming a reality for more people. I would also add this was one of the best publicspaces conferences I have been to and likely one of the best conferences in recent times.
Where to go next in 2017?
The Eurostack adopts the European social stack live at PublicSpaces 2027?!
Finally the Pebble time 2 came…
As most of you know I was a big Pebble fan, for many reasons but battery life is a massive plus. The Ticwatch 5 pro was doing my head in, because although it will last a day no problem. Once you add sleep tracking its a very different story.
It’s taken a little while (just under a year I think) to get back into the pebble way of doing things but after 2-3 days I have forgotten most of the affordances of Android Wear OS.
Sleep tracking is exactly what i should be, and so far I have half charged it since I got it and then one more time to full a few days before going to Amsterdam. Funny enough the temptation to charge it every morning is pretty high. So far the only thing which has caused me to really think its waterproofing and spa use.
I do wish it had better waterproofing and could handle the heat and wetness of a steam room but I am reminded how the buttons on the original Pebble 2 started caved in on itself (while in a spa).
Maybe there’s a covering which could help?
We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing the problems with single sign on, Google chrome forcefully downloading 4gig of a LLM and why on earth is meta smart glasses selling so well, despite privacy worries?
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“
You are seeing aspects of this with the dailyshow solve a male loneliness battle, Kindle owners jail breaking their devices and Flickr.org proving death is not a edge case.
Ian thinks: Although the piece about the wives of AI skilled workers Wired magazine makes clear the wider sad effect of everything centring around AI, is causing huge problems for partners, friendships and families. The domination of AI in every conversation is something I have noticed more and more. Sad times indeed.
Ian thinks: This piece titled comrade trump sums up a lot of the points have made about the Trump effect. Of course, its all side effects of some of the worst political policy’s in decades (it can be argued). But Cory and others are right, this disruption to the order does provide a green light for public value alternatives. Also worth watching Cory from Republica this year which touches on these these themes.
Ian thinks: One of the biggest claims about AI is it will solve cancer. This episode breaks down the claims and puts everything in perspective. The idea of AI solving cancer gets thrown around a lot and its not just a lie but also takes resources away from existing efforts which shocked me.
Ian thinks: I didn’t get much time to be involved in this years Fediforum but Laurens, covered the event and pulls some good ties between it and 2mr.social. The interesting point is how its become a bigger tent for much more than the technology of the activitypub. Having the green party give a keynote and even larger conversations about sovereignty from American traditional social media; is a clear sign of maturity.
Ian thinks: This is one so many true stories of the ongoing problem of AI psychosis. Its unreal but so dangerous. The analysis afterwards is good but doesn’t go into enough depth. You might look at it and shrug but the recent research isnt looking good either, with AI frying our brains in other ways.
Ian thinks: With the insanity of predication markets comes a crypto driven site called Dare market. Its exactly like Black Mirror’s common people. But comes from the madness of the memecoin era when people would do outrageous things to convince people to buy their memecoins. A time of corruption, foolishness and rug pulls.
Ian thinks: 404 interview the highly rated Natasha Dow Schüll, who’s excellent book Addicted by design, I quote a lot. Its great to see how relevant her book is during social media addiction then and now prediction markets. If you haven’t read her book go do it! I also noticed a lot uptick in this space with Mozilla, tech wont save us and even Jon Oliver talking about prediction markets (not available outside the USA, so here is a reaction video).
Ian thinks: When W Social jumped into the limelight and claimed to be the only European social network to fill a void. Many of us couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Elena’s uncovering post cuts the cord on the whole shambles which is W Social and is a clear reminder to work together not alone in darkness.
Ian thinks: The New_public live events are always worth watching even before I started working for them. Tackling the AI monster with human and public thoughts is a good start for a conversation about a future most of us would rather make happen.
Ian thinks: I recently watched the full titled AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. Watching with my partner and friends raised an interesting discussion. The AI doc really tears down the binary wall of AI boosters and doomers, with some practical suggestions we can all do.
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I didn’t see this session live because it was originally in German and it clashes with another session I wanted to see.
There is so much in this session but it was a good reminder of why I was keen to setup making the familiar strange podcast. The nuance of intimacy and the sessions final point is something which comes up in the AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist.
I spent a good amount of time in Berlin, Germany recently for the fantastic Republica conference.
This was recorded on a Ryanair flight (I luckily booked my flights over 3 months ago) using a number of even newer tunes. I had to do quite a bit of editing from the different times when my arm was knocked but it turned out pretty well.
I tried to recreate it on the way back but honestly, the first one was better although I did prefer some of the second mix tunes but it didn’t flow as much. I especially love the mix from Remember the future – Ripsaw!
All recorded on my ageing Pacemaker device, but the drift DJ alpha testing is getting better everyday. So look out, a whole mix might be coming soon.
The cover art comes from a shot I took of Liquidrome, near the hotel I was at. There was a football game happening and so I used Gemini to remove the football match then touched up the colours, etc myself. It was hot in Berlin all week and it was great to have the long bright nights.
The playlist is…
00:00:00 Voices In My Head x Insomnia (Stephani B Mashup) – Faithless
00:01:34 Mandy (extended mix) – 2nd Phase
00:04:38 Dare me – Hayley Parsons
00:08:54 Extortion (Extended mix) – Everlight
00:15:07 Remember The Future (Extended Mix) – Ferry Tayle & TonKs pres. Mirage
00:19:17 Never (H3rtz Bootleg Rework) – The Roc Project Feat. Tina Arena
00:24:02 Seven cities (V-one’s living cities mix) – Solar Stone
00:30:11 Ripsaw – Everlight
00:34:09 La Verità (Extended Mix) – Alex Merk & U-Mount
00:38:14 Catch Me (Aumak Extended Remix) – Ormus
00:42:57 Rise Again (Extended Mix) – Adam Lumina
00:46:02 Stresstest (John Askew Remix) – John O’callaghan
00:52:34 Adagio In G Minor (Extended Mix) – DIM3NSION
Anyway enjoy the mix on peertube either on my own mixgarden or on rankett at a lower quality.
We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing how Tesla robotaxis being remotely driven, seeing Linkedin spying and fingerprinting job hunters and the absolute madding thoughts of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, translated for us lay people?
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“
You are seeing aspects of this with few people posting on social media, a new plan to bring plugin solar to the UK and the EFF leaving X because its just too much!
Ian thinks: What’s it like to walk the streets and live your life with the Meta smartglasses? Well you don’t need to put down the money yourself because Ella has described in a lot of detail her experiences. I find the privacy recommendations at the end useful but will meta learn and act? Not likely…
Ian thinks: When are we going to take the well established practice of the separations of concerns seriously. It seems most people have forgotten, never run commands you don’t understand and certainly don’t provide access to sensitive data. This is why Google’s AI will never have explicit consent to my drives and data.
Ian thinks: Its quite a serious question and In this podcast, about a Android streaming box, which is pretty much a Trojan horse. The question becomes a lot more serious, especially when thinking about national security and the endless IOT junk found and shipped from many shopping sites. Does your coffee cup really need to be connected and what is it up to on your network?
Ian thinks: Age verification and stopping harms from young people is always in the news I found Proton’s summary of the alternatives quite useful for anyone being told this is a binary choice. The CEO’s blog is also worth reading too.
Ian thinks: At the start of April I gave a talk to European broadcasters about the future of social. At the very end I mentioned prediction markets, and the impact of a number of trends; being crypto, gamestop and economic reality of today. It was a surprise for many but a reality worth understanding. I was pleased to see Last week tonight’s John Oliver’s segment about the exact thing a week ago too.
Ian thinks: This report from OFCOM, highlights how less people are posting on traditional social media. There are many reasons for this but when I saw the report, it was a clear call back to the future of social report where we described people migrating to smaller private networks. Like it or not, companies like Meta did this to themselves with their emphasis on algorithms, enshitification and so much more.
Ian thinks: Good reddens, it was a machine pumping out so much AI slop and misinformation. Of course we know the real reason of Sora closure; the huge costs to Open AI and there already over inflated stock price.
Ian thinks: We have all heard the stories about AI use, but I found this podcast with Oprah Winfrey and Tristan Harris, quite captivating and a clear reminder of the problem of incentives. This is also a big part of the newly released AI Doc, which I do recommend watching.
Ian thinks: Does Facebook need its own museum, I wonder? But like the recently compiled geocities archive, there was moments of creativity and personal joy we all had. Is this worth celebrating and archiving, is another question?
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I finally found sometime after working with the Drift Zero team, to install the latest alpha build. Things have been hectic for a while but one night I got some time to play.
It was great, although I didn’t really know all the buttons, so I was just working it out by pressing and playing. Its only today I seen the video explaining it all (although I should have spent more time on the discord group)
Anyway with me feeling around, I was able to create a few mixes but found a problem where some of my tunes were cooked/garbled but I had no idea why. This is obviously the bug and should be fixed pretty soon.
Honestly the device is excellent and I’m looking forward to more time with it, especially now I know what the buttons should do and I can use the recorder. I have a flight to Berlin for Republica 2026 and a series of long trains to Amsterdam for PublicSpaces, so plenty of time to really play.
Being optimistic, I also entered a session into EMFCamp 2026 to potentially DJ live using the Zero or Pacemaker Device as a backup. Considered a DJ hackday at EMFCamp but decided maybe next time.
One of the simple but simple but hardest things is rethinking my role. I still occasionally use a bio which mentions working at the BBC as the Senior Firestarter. I have been calling myself Founder & Firestarter, which is ok. But thanks to Angie & Jennifer, I now have a better description of what I’m doing.
I’m a Digital futurologist, using data and insight to change people’s lives for the better.
Within the BBC, I was always a bit of an intrapreneur always pushing for new projects and approaches. I tended to bend the rules because they were not fit for purpose, be it forwarding calendar invites to my one and only calendar (separation of work and pleasure was never going to be the same for me). The result of this meant my network was vast and diverse. It was never just work, it was driving to a societal public purpose. I was never going to switch to a capitalist stance, and struggled when going to a few new networking events.
I become an advisor to quite a few different projects/organisations. Starting with the Amplify project (the only media related thing I’m doing now), then for the Open Rights Group (something I couldn’t ever do as a BBC employee) and Johannes asked me if I’d be interested in doing the same for the Fediforum. This was just before the future of social report was finally made public, thanks to existing colleagues (Bill, Antonia, Tristan, Todd and others).
My interest in the future of social connected with where I wanted to go and had pushed hard for the BBC to take a lot more seriously. I’m starting to push a bit harder on the social stuff as I have a big interest in how people meet, date, play and less alone lone generally. Currently I have a podcast series around modern intimacy, ideas/plans around the next generation of social platforms (the fediverse = Activitypub & ATproto) and finally my own book which I likely will self publish along with the dating manifesto.
My main work which actually pays is working with New_Public on the Public Service Incubator. It’s a good position and hope to be doing a lot more with them as the project matures to the open web.
During the year I did have some other roles I was asked about but I turned them down as I felt I moved on from a lot of the media stuff. Although Perceptive and adaptive media stuff is waiting for the right time. to rethink it Likewise, I had a lot of people ask about AI related stuff, which I have spoke about at a few events already. To date AI still doesn’t feature on my CV.
My interest in data is still important with the digital legacy work, especially the machine readable wishes project with the first workshop at MyData 2025. It was also great to be given an award for my impact on Mydata over the years. Another place I have been focusing on more then previously. At FOSDEM 2026, I gave 2 talks. One a workshop on the machine readable wishes and the second one around Human data interaction, its a talk I thought about while at My Data 2025 and participating into their updated constitution.
I have also met a few people on the way, a couple of them starting working for me (as such). Sam, was introduced to me by his mother who I knew from BBC World Service. He’s a highly skilled developer and interested in socially important projects which work for people. Hence the machine readable wishes was a ideal connection point. I have been thinking about the setup like a work experience with mentoring. The strange thing is that Sam isn’t the only one…
Currently I’m at a crossroads because I agreed to myself I would give the business one year… Its been just over a year now. I actually setup the business in mid April.
I like the freedom of running my own business but I don’t like the instability of chasing jobs. I have also made things tricky by working on multiple things. I had some advice from Jennifer who was slight shocked when I said I would give it a year and see (one of the decisions I made with my coaching. just before leaving the BBC) .To be honest the business isn’t doing too bad but I really hoped I would have some lecturing to add to the part time work and startup projects.
Balancing what it would be like to go back into full time work with the interesting life of running my own business is top of mind. I’m also super aware of the difficulty of getting a full time job right now. So many of my older friends are struggling with applying, gong through many rounds of interviews and unrealistic salaries. The tech industry is so full of lay-offs and insatiability. It seems to make sense to take advantage of personality, thoughts and build something for me.
As a whole its amazing where I was a year ago and wouldn’t have imagined I would be where I am now. But I can’t rest, I need to move forward as I have much I want to do, setup and achieve…
Maybe the firestarter is still apart of me… ?
We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed seeing Gran-parents doom-scrolling, seeing Attie launching during the ATmosphere conference and the study showing people prefer sycophantic AI bots.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
You are seeing aspects of this with Norway taking aim at Enshittification, graphene finally getting its time and the rush for a global human-made/non AI made logo.
Ian thinks: Naomi’s points about privacy and how its been watered down year after year is key. I haven’t heard anyone say privacy is dead for a while, but they act like it is gone and not needed any-more.
Ian thinks: Resistance against smart glasses, is fair. Although I do find the Bluetooth signatures fascinating, I guess like MAC addresses sniffing could be used to filter/avoid all types of Bluetooth devices in the present and future?
Ian thinks: We are so use to the share this button on legacy social media sites but this careful critique of the new Mastodon share this post button, uncovers the difficulty of sharing with privacy and in a federated way.
Ian thinks: This blog post from Linux distribution system76 – Pop!OS. Is a excellent read about the problems with age verification. Education is the corner stone of the argument and seems to be sadly forgotten in debates on high.
Ian thinks: The ban of social media and young people is everywhere right now. I have personal problems with the over reach and wider effects of this, including age verification as in the link above. Like above the call for education is echoed with better alternatives like safety by design and stronger regulation of design and practice.
Piracy never disappeared but is gain some momentum recently due in part to the enshittification of streaming services. What I find interesting about this post is the global look at countries and the concerns such as privacy and security in them.
Ian thinks: In this tear down of Lego’s smart book, its clear Lego did a good job making it as simple and smart as possible. There was always a worry it would require a external service or completely locked down. Will it change the way Lego is seen is a bigger question
Ian thinks: There is so much off the back of Meta and Google losing the first of many court cases following the landmark court case. I have tried to explain the underlying problems to friends without getting too technical or too fluffy. So I sent this video a few which seems to have worked much better.
Ian thinks: Bernie asks Claude the questions we should all be asking not just AI companies but each other. Wait for the long awkward pause from Claude AI as it comes back with a more realistic answer.
Ian thinks: In this podcast Tristan and friends talk about a new AI documentaries, comparing it to some very thoughtful docs from the past. I agree with the idea, just hope it turns out to be half of what they say it could be.
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