People are people (and data is data)

[Update: NB: this post only addresses one side of big data – the more commercial one – and doesn’t touch on the enormous wealth of other applications of huge data sets (environmental, medical, etc.). I’ll try to cover those in another post soon.] There’s been an enormous amount of talk across the whole of the business world about Big Data. …

What price success? (a note on corporate ethics)

Last week I spoke at FOM12, and the closing question was a proper BOOM. The questioner asked whether I think it’s inherently wrong for businesses to use personal data to target products, ads and content. I found myself saying, “It comes down to ethics.” It felt a little weird to say that, although I was gratified to see a few …

The hero with a thousand faces (thanks, Joe Campbell)

[I’ve recently been re-reading some of the work of my hero Joseph Campbell, which inspired my talk on Monday at Next Service Design in Berlin, which you can watch here. Below is (more or less) what I talked about…] What is the soundtrack to your life? Even if you don’t have an answer, you understand the question – because every …

Blinded by the light

This is the less selfish post that accompanies my previous one… and in many ways, the more important of the two. As I mentioned, I spoke at both Picnic and MEX last week. As a result, I came home with a head jam-packed full of awesome, and am only just now able to start sifting through the highlights. The overarching …

Me and my (data) shadow

I’ve been on a bit of a speaking tour the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been growing more vested in and impassioned by my current topic every time I talk about it. What I’ve been talking about is how we can become more human, better at being human, using all the richness of data and technology that we are …