The Foreseen

Another busy week. It feels relentless, but we’re still moving forward which is good.

We came through the other side of the governance process, and I’m told it’s the high level of open-working that helped. It’s hard to deny something’s working when you’ve got a recording of hundreds of people attending a community drop-in.

Aside from that, last week I

Data community session

The community session was OK. It was hosted at IBM’s offices near Waterloo and, for some reason, one of the Boston Dynamics robot dogs was there. I’m not sure how that was relevant to the challenges data practitioners in government face today.

The panel talk with some data leaders was all right. It was good to hear from Chris Chambers, who’s going to be leading on the National Data Library. I was glad to hear that they’re working out what it (and other existing data platforms) should be, if anything, it sounds like they’re taking a strategic approach. Riffing on the public value a library provides, I asked the panel whether we might use this opportunity to identify datasets as digital public goods, that could be made openly available and sustained in line with the government’s primary mission on growth. Obviously I didn’t expect a full answer but Chris Chambers gave a great response, so that’s promising.

Magic, imagination and AI

This was a good panel talk, on metaphysics, magic through the ages, incantations, other, and what is and isn’t real. These were people who were grappling with technology and its impact on humanity, linking it to concepts other than productivity and economic growth.

I liked the mentions of different cosmologies. There’s a line back from AI through science and maths to astrology and cosmology, just trying to understand stuff. How this may wield power is interesting too. I’m really into prehistoric Britain and the cosmology of the place, and twice prehistoric Britons placed a lot of power in metal objects which was followed by a crash. Bronze Age collapse, divestment of Iron Age weapons. They even filled the mines in.

Links were made between the conjuring of magic, but also the incantation of imagination. William Blake was raised, and words and images very much happened to him. It got me thinking about Burroughs, numerology, theophany.

At one point, the image of Paul Daniels popped into my head.

A guy at the end spoke about his work with Pakistani and Afghani people in refugee camps, some of whom been in the same camp for 10 years or more. He speaks to them over the internet, both wearing VR headsets, walking with them down London streets, side by side – lifting them out of the place their body is in (their words). If that ain’t the kind of magic we should be spending our time making, I don’t know what is.

Enjoyed seeing Ella and Mark, and I spotted Matt Webb in the audience. Tobias Revell’s parts on the panel was as erudite as his blog posts.

Fooooooood

On Valentine’s Day we went to Kish Mish in Crystal Palace for Persian food. It was really tasty, reminded me of the meal’s my friend’s dad would cook growing up. Definitely worth a trip, even if you’re not in south London.

On Saturday we headed in to town to pick up my new computer and to grab some climbing shoes for my partner. We chanced there might be free seats in a couple of places, but everywhere was full…except Mountain. Their food is so good, unbelievably tasty. I had beef sweetbreads with leeks and rhubarb. Delicious.

Running

Over the moon with being able to return to running. My hip is faring fine, the low mileage and exercises the physio gave me are doing the trick. My fitness has dropped quite a lot from where it was, but that’s to be expected. Endurance has dropped the most, but it’s getting lighter earlier in the mornings, so there’s plenty more time to be outside getting fit again.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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