After a lengthy unplanned absence from this poor neglected website, here are a few things that have caught my interest recently.
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been studying AI for a while now and I’ve been disciplined enough to start putting findings and synthesis into a theme. Which has been a lot of fun. My second report is focused on AI and process and where does it fit in? And by process I mean a variety of things. The process of synthesis, collaboration, design and innovation. The different integrations of AI and the balance of input and output. Many years ago my father was researching doctors’ pauses while they used a computer with a patient in the room with them, but tried to keep the patient’s attention. Is that a leverage point for AI?
I’m early in my sketching the structure of this theme. Do send me your thoughts if you’d like to.
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Continuing on the theme of my family was/is really smart so I can pretend to be as well by association, this was a fun thing to see in the news this week: GCHQ released new images of the World War II codebreaking work at Bletchley Park. On the 80th anniversary of the Colossus. In this I didn’t expect to see a ‘report on progress’ letter from my Grandfather included in the release.
In the letter Max Newman mentions ‘Flowers, of the P.O., has produced a suggestion for an entirely different machine‘ which Max supports. What became the Colossus computer. Flowers was an incredible electrical engineer who was introduced to Max by Alan Turing and went on to design and build both the Heath Robinson and the Colossus computers. Which worked the first time they were turned on after delivery!
Tommy Flowers was on loan from the Post Office where he worked as an electrical engineer, exploring electronics in telephone exchanges. Flowers, like most working at Bletchley received little to no recognition for their contribution because of the official secrets act. Flowers was left in debt after the war because he’d used large sums of his personal funds to build Colossus. When Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus, he was refused the loan because the bank did not believe such a machine could work. And he couldn’t say it does!
Also an interesting New look at Newman from Bletchley Park where, in a podcast from Bletchley Park, they explore Newman’s “crucial role in breaking the Lorenz“:
There’s also this enjoyable Wired UK piece on Max Newman, where my father recalls beating Alan Turing at Monopoly:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/turing-mentor-max-newman
That Monopoly board was eventually released in 2012:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2012/sep/24/alan-turing-monopoly
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Matt Webb, formerly of the outstanding and inspirational firm Berg, wrote about ternary plots a few weeks ago. Indeed, it is true that the management consulting tool of the usual 2×2 is limiting and ends up being a rather binary thing. Ternary plots, Webb poses, “are the 21st century tool we’ve been waiting for.” And I think he’s right.
https://interconnected.org/home/2024/01/05/triangles
I think what’s interesting about these plots is that you can look at the data and answer a question as opposed to the snapshot quality of a standard 2×2 which is mostly an answer in itself. Naturally, the ternary diagram is a completely different tool than the 2×2 but I like the idea of trying to advance the illustration of data and the meaning and information you can get from it. In a very simple way.
This diagram is in a practice lesson online where the question is,
If the coastal forests are logged, what kind of dune will likely establish?
Did you get the answer right?
Dune Morphology answer:
Thank you SERCE at Carleton College: https://serc.carleton.edu/mathyouneed/geomajors/ternary/index.html
As an aside, do sign up for Webb’s newsletter on his AI Clock. Why does a clock need AI you might ask? Surely, where it might have been most useful was back in 1900 when Einstein and Poincare were working on clock synchronization. However, they worked it out. Obviously. (Einstein’s 1905 paper: On the electrodynamics of moving bodies.)
This new clock is something uniquely Matt Webb and quite delightful:
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Moving on to something new and yet surprisingly still AI related is Mia Blume‘s work in the intersection of design and AI. Blume does this through Designing with AI, where you can become a member to join a community and learn to use generative AI.
A former design leader at Pinterest, Square and IDEO, Blume is one of the leading thought leaders on designing with AI. And I’ve truly enjoyed every newsletter or talk of hers. I want to share a little:
This is a brilliant and very smart report on AI that Blume gives in the video: AI Playbook for Design Teams. Don’t worry, you do not need to be in a team to get a lot of value from it.
Blume’s Newsletter, Designing with AI is a little different in that she actually tries different applications, shows you results as well as gives her analysis of movements in the AI space.
https://substack.com/@miablume?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Here’s a list of the top posts of 2023.
My favourite was ‘7 women in AI you should know about’ because I was exposed to thinking and ideas I’d not already come across.
I somewhat wish it was easier to find the things that are further away from you, yet likely to be most interesting to you. Half the fun is the discovery though.
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Perhaps settling in on a Friday Four things to share, I’ll wrap it up here. But share a bonus item. Something I’ve been obsessed with lately.
Maker Portfolios on YouTube.
These are two minute videos that a high school student can, if they wish, submit along with their college applications. And before you write off the quality of a high school student maker portfolio, please take a look at any one of the following.
These videos have the combined effect on me of making me feel quite unproductive and limited, yet I cannot stop watching new ones.
Liong Ma, who delivers the line for one of his projects: “I created a classical physics breaker which uses radioactive decay to violate the laws of determination.“
Angelina Tsuboi, is someone I think I should create a google alert for, as in about 6 or 7 years time I feel she’s going to be doing some mindblowing things.
Pranav Ramesh, this was the first I ever came across. I really felt like he could be far more arrogant about his achievements. (He’s not arrogant at all…)
Maker portfolios are very different from the Brown video portfolios which are more interest based, and creative in a whole different way.
Cardistry from Andrew Hsieh,
I suppose this is something of a ‘weeknotes‘.