Category: Philosophy

When I was a student I quickly became enamoured with contemporary European philosophy that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Compared to the stuffy concept of an absolute truth, long socks, and a privileged path from school to luxury SUV and trophy wife touted by the teachers at my privileged single-sex bluestone high school, writers like Deleuze, Foucault, Irigary, and Adorno had an anarchistic attitude to truth it as a concept amid many concepts. Plus it seemed as disruptive and revolutionary as the 90s raves I attended very weekend. “A concept is a brick. It can be …

After watching the Channel Four series Years and Years and then observing the British General Election I was confused. Was Years and Years a drama or a documentary? Was this one of those unique moments Trumpian moments when art imitates life? Or is everything just fucked and fucked up? Who could have thought that a politician with a record of lies, deceit, and general clowning around could be chosen so vehemently by the people? Progressives like me, safe in our privilege, tweet our dismay, moaning about Murdoch, the media, Zuckerberg, Facebook, and the working class. When art starts to imitate …

So I recently and belatedly watched The Defiant Ones on Netflix and was completely enthralled. It is a great story that shows how music producers and entrepreneurs  Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre transformed the music industry, founded Beats Electronics, and got very very rich. I knew Dr Dre was one of the key members of N.W.A, but Jimmy Iovine was new to me. Starting as an recording engineer in the 1970s, Iovine worked with John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, before working as a producer with the likes of Patti Smith, Tom Petty, and U2, founding Interscope in 1980 Records, and ultimately Beats Electronics. …

I was on a business trip to Melbourne recently. It was a crazy one week trip flying from a bitterly cold -6c in Amsterdam, to a steamy 28c for the tail end of the Australian summer. The weather was glorious. The jet lag was intense. The trip wasn’t taken alone. I travelled with a colleague, a super smart digital marketer who happily shares the same sense of humour, politics, and passion for what we do. It was kind of like a real-life Airport Test, where we were forced to spend a week together. Flights, apartment, long days, and meals in …

I found this piece I wrote a day before G. was born on a long discarded and unpublished website recently. It’s interesting to reflect on how I felt then and how I feel now. I am definitely a better father, but the irony is that for my son, his experience with me is one of absence; work; trips; early conference calls. Fatherhood AUGUST 2, 2010 As I face the imminent birth of a new child, a son, I can’t help reflect on the nature of fatherhood. In doing so I need to reflect on my own father, who is in …

The World Economic Forum recently published an article looking at the global digital landscape and there are some pretty interesting insights about the changing competitive dynamics and where the next Google or Facebook will come from.   Sadly, it's unlikely to be Australia or many western countries, including the Netherlands where I currently enjoy 300Mb per second Internet speeds (and had a whine about not being able to get the 500 Mb plan). It's horrifying that Australia is not positioned to take advantage of changing technologies and is instead debating job creation from building mega coal mines. Our leaders are …

In business today the acronym BAU (Business As Usual) gets thrown around a fair bit. Usually used to distinguish between major capital funded work – strategic work –  and normal operational activity. It makes sense right. You have the strategic stuff and you have the lights on stuff. The problem is that BAU can become a catch-all for mediocrity. Segmenting a roadmap between strategic (interesting) initiatives and BAU (standard) activities can mean that there is no space created for innovating the day-to-day activities of running a business; the stuff that really impacts the customer. It can also create dissension in …

The thing about machines is that they inevitably reflect the feelings, thoughts, and unique passions of their creators. One of my favourite writers/ philosophers, Gilles Deleuze believed that the brain could be extended through computers to create an abstract brain, that is an abhorrent and beautiful reflection of ourselves. Perhaps Microsoft should have thought a little more about unintended consequences of using a mirror when  they launched Tay, an artificial intelligence learning bot via twitter late March 2016. Tay was created for “18- to 24- year-olds in the U.S. for entertainment purposes”, so I’m unsure what they were expecting, perhaps some cheeky commentary about the Kardashians, …