Why I’m rebuilding Niche Clever
I've never known quite how to respond when people ask me what I do. I can usually give them an answer appropriate to the circumstances. Publishing, consulting, building websites, working…
Writing
Writing
Notes from the work, and things that do not fit neatly anywhere else.
I write about projects while they are changing, older work when it becomes newly relevant, and questions that emerge somewhere between publishing, software, organisations and the web.
Some pieces are practical. Some are arguments. Some are project archaeology or notes on an object I have been building.
They do not all need to explain Niche Clever.
AI, in order
A short manifesto for engaging with AI
AI can give people a much greater capacity to learn, make things and help one another. It also raises serious questions about the conditions under which that capacity is created…
Thinking with machines: cognition, authority and responsibility
I have spent the last few years becoming much more capable with AI while becoming, if anything, less relaxed about it. That probably sounds contradictory, but I am not sure…
Start here
Understand before you rebuild
An inherited system rarely consists only of the thing visible on screen. There is the architecture somebody meant to build, and there is the second architecture that accumulated through use:…
AI as proposer, not decider
"Use AI" is not a design decision. It says nothing about what the model is allowed to propose, what must remain deterministic, what a person has to approve, which source…
Publishing, knowledge and systems
I did not arrive at publishing, knowledge and systems by putting three attractive nouns next to one another. Publishing was there first. It brought with it sources, metadata, audiences, schedules,…
More writing
When complex work gets flattened
A portfolio can make complicated work look simpler and less credible at the same time. Put every project into the same card, give each one a confident paragraph and a…
Making structure visible
Sometimes the useful thing I make first is not the final product at all. It is a representation: a timeline, a schema, a project map, a content model, a source…