I have a particular difficulty writing this part of the blog as I don’t seem to recall any details of what I have been doing this past week. Luckily, I write a small note in a journal every morning (-ish) to help remind me and also to help me process what I have actually achieved each week.

I did a lot of admin-type work last week, tying up loose ends and planning the next set of projects in the pipeline. I finished the slides I had prepared for a teaching session scheduled for Thursday afternoon. I had devised a fun activity for the students around the topic of Project Management and was looking forward to the class activity and seeing how they would go about the task. Sadly, the session was moved online at the last minute, and I had to improvise a little. The theory section was fine, although teaching online is really difficult as you don’t get immediate feedback as most people shut off their cameras for privacy reasons, which I can totally relate to. The exercise was possible but had to be completed during a collaborative online meeting through Teams. I split the class into groups and assigned breakout rooms and then spent the time moving between the rooms to offer assistance and advice. It was okay, but I would have much preferred to have done this in the class.

One thing that has come up as a direct result of the push to deploy AI tools in business is the need to control and protect data. I think there will be a number of surprises over the coming months as businesses discover that their data governance policies are inadequate and lend the AI tools to create security and confidentially issues. I have started developing a consultation for small businesses to address this before it becomes a problem. If you want to know more, reach out.

In personal news, I had been given 1.7kg of coffee fruit to process. I’d asked for it, and as a friend produces coffee, he gave me a small bag to try out. It is a long and arduous process to get from the fruit to dried beans that can be roasted. I have a bag ready for roasting, which comes out at less than 200 grams of beans, quite a reduction from that initial amount. The fruit can be used to make juice, but I’m not sure how to do that, so I binned the outer shells. Perhaps I’ll look into that another time. I’m looking forward to the roasting, but I have done it before, from beans supplied by my friend previously.

Reading

I haven’t been as religious or as motivated to read novels this week. I have no specific explanation; it’s just one of those things, I guess.

Not reading novels doesn’t mean that I don’t read a lot. In fact, the amount I read this week is as much as ever. I read or started reading a couple of interesting articles and papers.

I started to read a blog post on the impact of Starlink’s push to provide internet to the Amazonian region. The post entitled Starlink’s Amazonian Adventure: Bridging Gaps Or Just Adding Concerns? by Lua Cruz examines one of the interesting but largely misunderstood aspects of the so-called digital divide (zero-rated schemes) and other topics. Often touted as a means to get the underserved online, these schemes actually restrict and reduce the beneficiaries to a subset of the internet and create incentives for monopolies to do nothing to develop communications in the served regions. We’ve seen a lot of that in the Caribbean, and the most prominent example worldwide was Facebook’s attempt to control the Internet in India, which luckily didn’t get off the ground.

I started another paper entitled “China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda”. I haven’t read enough to form an opinion as yet. However, it is interesting to learn more about the global forces vying for control of the Internet and how we’re at a precarious point in its history in that it might start to fracture badly. That will not be good for the world.

Speaking of which, on the 35th anniversary of the modern Internet, at least the Internet as most people experience it, Time Berners-Lee wrote a blog post on his WWW Foundation site. It’s not long, and I think you should read it:

Of note

The crypto world is all a buzz because number go up! The world burns faster because of your ilk, and all you care about is a little bit of magic bean money rising in value. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your anuses for a thousand years.

I mentioned the resurgence of ideas from the old Internet; well, another one was promoted and did the rounds (at least in my Internet circles). Do you remember blog rolls? They were the Internet’s recommendation engine before advertising and marketing destroyed the Internet by making us units of production to place ads next to. Long live the independent web and the ideas that they promote.

Have a great week.

I had one of those in-between weeks. I would probably be better describing it as a transition week. Some things came to an end, and others started up.

I had some marking to do for the students I teach, I had a bit of admin work to tie up some loose ends, and then I spent a lot of time researching and continuing the course on Internet governance. As a little context, this course spans over ten weeks and at the end of every module, there is a quick knowledge check test. What takes most of the time is the amount of reading to be done, as well as the supplementary videos and talks to listen to. You really need to enjoy the subject and have the fortitude to put in the required hours. I love reading and read fast, so I don’t mind that part. However, I wouldn’t say I like video as a format for learning, and I am aware that I’m going against the grain of how online learning is headed. Thankfully, I have a simple solution that gives me what I need in the format I like. I use various transcript tools to export and then read the text. What I can also do with that is store it in my DEVONthink database for searching and note-taking at a later date. This is much more useful than a link to a YouTube video.

Reading

I finished Clément Perarnaud’s (Open Future) paper entitled Finding the path to a more open internet. A new European approach toward internet standards. If you are interested in the open Internet, I would recommend reading it. It provides a good overview of what is happening there.

I know I said I wouldn’t, but I bought a new book to read, but I couldn’t ignore a book called Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman, which “considers how and why data that is gathered about us is increasingly limiting what we can and can’t do in our lives and, crucially, what the alternatives are.”. I’m looking forward to reading it. It’s a small book, so it shouldn’t take too long.

Of note

All You Face Are Belong To Us

I was happy to learn that Spain has decided to end the operations of World Coin in the country. I can’t think of another project that is as poorly thought out as this one, and I implore anyone thinking of signing up the reflect on the risk of giving intimate biometric data in exchange for a lousy shitcoin that will be worthless when the plug is inevitably pulled.

The currency of destruction

Speaking of shitcoins, Bitcoin hit an all-time high this week, some seem to think, proof that it is a viable currency. Proof (I would say) of this excellent quote from Kurt Vonnegut, “We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”

A New Hope?

From my little corner of the internet, there seems to be a real resurgence in interest in some of the earlier and open standards and protocols. One example is RSS or Really Simple Syndication. I’ve been a fan and a user of it since its beginnings and have never stopped using it. It’s the main way I get much of the news I read.

Have a great week.

With Carnaval over, it was back to some serious work. I had a fairly eclectic week with some training, presentations, writing, and relaxation.

I ran one of my AI courses this week to a small public of managers and business owners. These are interesting moments where I evaluate how the public perceives this technology. It doesn’t take long for the existential questions to creep into the discussion, as well as the whole debate about job loss. Remember, these are business owners looking for ways to optimise productivity and reduce overheads. I tend to calm those thoughts down by showing the limitations and outright crappy outputs generated by these calculators on steroids.

The other training session I ran was with a multinational company in the Caribbean looking to use some of the latest generation of these tools built into everyday productivity applications. It was a really interesting experience and one that I hope to repeat in the future. Like the example above, there were several big think questions, but we managed to stay close to the objective of discussing what these tools can bring day-to-day and for the end user. I’ll finish by saying that they will not take away most jobs. They’ll change jobs, that’s for sure, but they will not replace them. The reason I say this is that when you actually look into what is required for the simplest of tasks like writing an email to a client, the required cognitive input is much more significant than we credit ourselves for; thus, we and they underestimate what is needed to get a result comparable to a human. We do it naturally because we’ve always done it that way. Computers are only just taking the baby steps. Will this situation last? I have no idea, but I’m not too worried for the foreseeable future. However, I will say one thing: these tools risk creating even more significant digital divides between those who can afford access and those who cannot. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with that.

Reading

I’ve been reading up on a lot of technical documentation for all sorts of systems, like cloud services, DNSSEC, and many other policy-related documents. Some of this is related to the work I’m doing with a couple of clients, and some is for the training course I’m still following.

Books-wise, it’s probably best for me to lay off trying to find new books for the moment. The reading and wanting-to-read queue is already too long.

There is one paper I wanted to call out. It’s titled Finding the path to a more open internet. A new European approach toward internet standards. I was lucky enough to participate (as an attendee) in the round table discussion of the paper and its general theme. It was an early start as I had to connect to the Zoom meeting at 6:30 am, but it was well worth it. I learned an enormous amount, and I’ve pretty much understood what it is I want to concentrate some of my time on going forward. My ARIN Fellowship kicked off and encouraged this, which you can read about here.

I think Internet governance is going to become even more critical to maintaining democracy around the world. I want to be there early in my understanding, perhaps even participate in discussions that help reduce the risks of a fractured and walled-gardened Internet.

Of note

I went to see Bob Marley: One Love at the local cinema. I chose one of the couple of VOST showings. VOST means Version Originale Sous Titré, i.e., original language subtitled in French. I’m used to this format, so the subtitles don’t really bother me, particularly as I don’t generally need them.

I don’t do reviews, so this is not that. Suffice it to say that the film is a love letter to Nesta and Jamaica. And I don’t mean that in a negative sense; quite the opposite. It is a story that is well worth telling, as well as promoting Jamaica itself. I was pleased with the dialogue being as authentic as possible, as I think it would have been tragic to anglicise the dialogue too much.

I’d say go and watch it if you can.

Have a great week.

Carnaval, productivity and AI 🥴

Source: https://www.moderntiki.com/velvet-ti-punch/

Where I live, the week was dominated by Carnaval. It is one of two events that puts the entire island into a state of slowed-down activity. Most shops are closed from Sunday to Wednesday. A few essentials are open but generally limited to the mornings only. I’ve been a regular visitor to Carnaval over the years I’ve been living here, and I’ve documented through photography several times; however, this year, I decided to take advantage of the slow down by concentrating on some of the administrative work I needed to do … and a sneaky ti’punch now and again. 😉

I had a relatively stressful personal situation to deal with on Monday that ended on Tuesday that kind of blew out the day and prevented me from being able to concentrate on some of the more cognitive heavy work I had scheduled to do. Speaking of schedules, I decided to completely redo the task management process I had put in place many years ago. Firstly, the old process was not fit for purpose, and secondly, I read a nice blog post about a similar situation that gave me some ideas to implement my own system. Without getting into the weeds, I had recently decided to note down the time I’m assigning to different tasks. I’ve limited this primarily to work-related tasks, but there are a couple of personal tasks in there that I log. For example, this one is being logged as I write this. As a result, my planning and task management process was pretty much out of alignment with the timing system. So I spent a little time matching them both as closely as possible to make more sense to me and to help me —which is the overall aim of my decision to log the time I’m taking on various projects, tasks, etc.— get a better appreciation of how I’m spending my time and to see if there are any things that I can rethink, modify. I’m mindful not to fall into the cult of the ‘productivity optimisation’ trap, but believe me, it is very easy to do so if you let your guard down. To avoid that, I have limited and generalised how I’m doing the timing. I wrote about it before here if you’re interested in the things I’ve been logging.

I’m working on a proposal for a consulting project in Saint Lucia, and I spent a little time writing the required document during the week, but it was hard to sum up the motivation gods to get too deep into it. I still have a few days before the submission deadline, and I have actually progressed quite well when I look at it now. I’ll likely finish it and submit it today at the latest.

I went out one of the evenings to watch a film called La Tresse (The Braid). It’s a story of three women on three different continents who are eventually linked through various trials and tribulations of life. It was a good story and a well-made film (some of the cinematography is stunning), despite being a little too contrived for my liking, but I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

Lastly, we had some family over for an evening snack and drink on the last official day of Carnaval (Wednesday). It’s nice to have people over now and again to share a couple of hours chatting and having a glass together.

Oh, before I forget, I made obligatory pancakes (crêpes) on Tuesday morning. I’ve never made them myself, and they turned out lovely if I say so myself. Before you ask, sugar and lime. I’m not a monster.

Reading

I continued reading the learning materials for the Internet governance course I’m currently studying. There’s a lot to read, and many suggested documents that I have been amassing to read in the future or at least reference for upcoming projects.

I started to read in earnest The Eye of The Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence by Matteo Pasquinelli. It is not light reading, but I feel it is necessary for me to get a deeper understanding of the topic and gain insight from different perspectives. The eBook is about £8, so well worth it.

I caved and bought the third book in the iRobot series, The Naked Sun. It’s light reading and enjoyable to close off the day by reading a few pages each evening before sleeping.

I have got a lot of other papers and documents on the go. I’ll try to list some of the notable ones in another post.

Of note

I stumped up to pay for one year of Microsoft’s Copilot integrated into the Microsoft 365 subscription. I have resisted paying for this technology for a good while as I haven’t placed much confidence in it or had the results from the free versions that have made the value proposition of paid-for access clear to me. This is essentially a test, and I’m not endorsing it yet. I have had some interesting results and some, frankly, dreadful results that even the most inexperienced intern would have bested without breaking a sweat. It’s a young technology being sold as a breakthrough product. I can tell you it is far from that, and you can rest assured your jobs are safe for the foreseeable future. I’m testing it further and doing the necessary research to understand better how it integrates and how you must structure and set up your data policies. I’ve already had (local) anecdotal evidence of a user being proposed information from documents they should never have had access to. The technology is not at fault here; it’s the data access policies of the organisation concerned. Security by obscurity is completely blown apart when you enable these tools on your data stores. However, what struck me is that there are literally thousands and thousands of organisations in the region precisely in that situation that risk finding out the hard way. There will be a lot of incidents and repercussions for small businesses if they willy-nilly buy Copilot and activate it in their Microsoft 365 tenants. Let’s talk, I can help.

It’s ti’punch time. Have a great week.

A new contract

My week was a little more stressful than I would have liked or anticipated. I teach at three different institutions, and at one of them, I had a difficult situation to manage with one of the students. This put a lot of stress on me and affected me to the point where I was unhappy with the situation that evening. I didn’t sleep well that night, and it took a few days to wind down fully. However, there was a positive outcome that will help going forward. As a teacher, I’m just trying to make a small positive difference in the lives of those I teach genuinely and sincerely. I strive to do that whenever I’m in front of a class or a group of professionals I train. Perhaps I’m a bit naïve.

I walked my dog on one of the afternoons so that I could free myself and decided to get some air. I always enjoy the time-out, but I don’t make the effort to do it regularly enough. I should make a pact and walk my dog more often. To be fair, she has plenty of space in our garden to wander around, and she has found or made a few holes in the fence to go for solo walkies all by herself, but that’s no excuse not to walk her when I can. Note to self: Walk the dog more often.

One of the positive things to happen this week was signing a new contract with a new client to provide my consulting services. I’m looking forward to working with digging deeper and providing value for money with my expertise in various topics. For the interests of confidentiality, I will not go into detail. However, I will say that I structure my contracts to make them affordable and manageable for those I work with. I set up a recurring monthly subscription rather than a quote and a one-off lump sum payment for work being done. This allows a lot more flexibility for the client and me regarding scope. One of the big problems in consulting and project management is scope creep. If we’d agreed on a fixed scope of work, it would get us into a difficult situation when we needed to negotiate the inevitable changes in the scope of the course of the project. With this method, we’re both open to change, and the project can change scope as and when the reality of the market changes without incurring further costs. I’m currently looking for more clients to work with, so if you’re interested, please reach out.

I spent a good five to six hours in technical training hosted by Microsoft on its new product, Copilot. It is definitely interesting how Microsoft has integrated the basic LLM functions into its core products, allowing users to save a little time here and there throughout their day. It will not completely revolutionise productivity, but it will give it a little boost here and there. Funny enough, during one of the demonstrations, the prompt given to Copilot didn’t end up with the desired result, and the trainer continued to try to manipulate the model into giving the answer he was looking for. After a while, it was clear that he should have given up and manually done the task, as it would have been quicker. I think this is a lesson we’ll all learn over the coming years when using these tools. Sometimes, doing it yourself without the aid of a Stochastic Parrot will be quicker, more efficient, and more accurate.

I caught up with someone I had worked with briefly over the last couple of years, but due to ‘circumstances’, we hadn’t really spoken or exchanged ideas, thoughts, and analysis on that. I think it merits a little more thought on whether there’s opportunity to work together in the future. 🤔

Reading

Where do I start? Honestly, this is one of the most challenging parts of this blog to write about, as I tend to read a lot of different things throughout the week using an RSS reader. I typically see over one thousand articles a day. What I have been reading has already been documented here previously, as I’m trying to finish Doppelgänger, which is taking a bit more time than I would have liked. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the book; quite the opposite. I have just had an excessive amount of work and reading to do for other topics that I hadn’t been in the right headspace to read more. That has changed, and I am nearly at the end of the book, having made time to read most evenings.

Other reading space has been taken over by the learning materials for the Internet Governance training I’m currently doing. There is so much to read and so much to look at and delve into. I’ve probably added about 30 or so papers to the reading queue.

Of note

Reviews of the Apple Vision Pro have come out, and there are certainly differing opinions. Some people feel this is the ultimate productivity device, and others the ultimate consumption device. I still don’t know where I stand on this, as I can see the glimmer of something that could be very useful. However, something keeps niggling me about the dystopian nature of extracting ourselves from the real world just to type or produce a few banal and ultimately useless emails, videos, podcasts, etc. It is probably why, despite loving listening to music, I much prefer listening through speakers rather than headphones. I do it, but I wouldn’t say I like cutting myself off from the world too much. There comes a point where I feel too removed and want to return to the space I occupy with others.

Have a lovely week.