Day: 24 April 2017
Our Machines Now Have Knowledge We’ll Never Understand
The transition from systems based on explicit rules to systems based on emergent algorithms is much more than a new generation of technology. It raises questions about what it is for humans to know things and about how we decide whether the output of a system is right or wrong (and whether that is even a meaningful question). That may sound esoteric and abstract, but it is vitally important to any organisation which operates rules based processes and to any person who may be the subject of such processes – which is pretty much everybody. David Weinberger has been writing clearly and thoughtfully about knowledge and technology for a long time, this article ranges from Galileo to Heidegger and from flood control to credit scores, to get to some important issues about how we understand and use the technology of the future.
The Big Shift in Strategy – Strategies of Trajectory
Echoing some of the same themes as Simon Wardley’s approach, this post argues the need for strategies to be developed with an understanding of movement and direction, rather than position – and to forge strong connection between the long term question, ‘where do we want to be?’ and the short term question, ‘what are the key choices we face now which will determine whether we are on the trajectory to get there?’