Perambulation

Thoughts on data, society, and other things that don't fit neatly into buckets.

First, we had suspects

October 8, 2016 – 6:39 pm by Alistair 0 Comments

I’m launching a conference on business technology disruption called Pandemon.io. I’d like it if you told your friends, or followed us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I’d love it if you signed up for our weekly newsletter, which we’re packing with useful stories and interviews with our speakers. And I’d be absolutely ecstatic if youRead more

On chat as interface

February 26, 2016 – 3:45 pm by Alistair 1 Comment

Musings on the (for now) strange world of chat, where the interfaces are untestable, every use leaves a logfile, each interaction is a survey, and we talk with our cars and bank accounts.

Inbox is the Trojan Horse for your personal AI

February 6, 2016 – 6:12 pm by Alistair 8 Comments

Google’s Mail products are a Trojan Horse with which the company is turning “use the Internet” into “talk with an AI.”

Unlocking our future past

December 16, 2015 – 10:08 pm by Alistair 0 Comments

In a few years, algorithms will be able to describe video content as well as humans can. Unlocking the pent up information in petabytes of video will have wide-ranging impacts on society.

This trifecta drives the next decade of tech

October 15, 2015 – 4:49 pm by Alistair 4 Comments

Big data, smart agents, and new interfaces are cool on their own. But together, they’re a virtuous cycle that shows what the next decade of tech looks like.

Can we fix representation?

August 24, 2015 – 5:54 pm by Alistair 3 Comments

Representative government is broken. But now we’re all connected, maybe syndicates can fix it?