Thinking for the human side of technology.
Essays and field notes on AI, education, automation and influence. Practical thinking for people shaping what comes next.
Explore the essays
Start with the newest ideas, or follow a theme through the archive.
Open AI, Closed Power? A Critique of Zuckerberg’s The Future Is for Everyone
Open AI, Closed Power? A Critique of Zuckerberg’s The Future Is for Everyone. I am simply not convinced that giving everyone access to a model answers the question.
Because the deeper question is not merely:
Who gets access to intelligence?
It is: Who gets to accumulate power around it?
Australia wants to lead on AI. It should start by making life work better
Australia should welcome an attempt to get ahead of the AI policy curve. But standards, data centres and new offices are only part of the job. The more urgent test is whether AI makes public services materially better for the people who need them. I welcome the...
Today’s Memex: Building a Second Brain That Does More Than Remember
Memex or 2nd Brain Vannevar Bush imagined a machine that could extend human memory. Eighty years later, artificial intelligence is turning that mechanical vision into an active partner for teaching, research, travel and decision-making.In 1945, American engineer...
Social Enterprise Brief: Evidence Is Becoming the New Currency of Impact
The social enterprise sector is entering a more demanding phase. It is no longer enough to be mission-led, values-aligned or locally trusted. Funders, buyers, policymakers and certification bodies are increasingly asking a harder question: what evidence shows that...
#WithHumanitiesYouUnderstand
#WithHumanitiesYouUnderstand Sure, with STEM you can. But with humanities, you can understand. CSIRO has a compelling campaign called #WithSTEMYouCan. And yes — with STEM you can build bridges, decode genomes, design vaccines, model climate systems, engineer new...
When Values Become the Operating System
Lessons from Ashesi, UTS Sri Lanka and the future of international education. I have been reflecting on a photograph I took in Colombo. It shows the UTS Sri Lanka sign rising above a busy Colombo street. Around it there is traffic, colour, signage, movement, heat,...
Humans at the Heart of Urban Technology: From Smart Cities to Learning Cities
Urban technology should not be judged by how many sensors, platforms or dashboards a city installs. It should be judged by whether people feel safer, move more easily, trust public systems more deeply, and have more agency in the places they live.
RUOK isn’t enough, we need to JOHARI-K
R U OK? Day gives us an important question, but the question only works when the relationship can carry the answer. The Johari Window helps us understand why honest disclosure depends on trust, feedback, and the slow work of knowing one another.
AI has not made assessment impossible. It has made weak assessment visible.
Generative AI has not made assessment impossible. It has made weak assessment visible. The real question is not whether students used AI, but whether our assessments still reveal judgement, intent, critique and learning.
A Referral Is Not Care: Why My Aged Care Needs to See Capacity and Capability
A follow-up reflection on My Aged Care’s capacity blind spot, digital exclusion, and the hidden work families perform to turn aged care approval into actual support.A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I called My Aged Care’s capacity blind spot. The argument was...
From Builders to Buyers: What We Lost — and What We Must Rebuild
There is a photograph of my father in a Telecom depot workshop in the late 1970s. Steel benches. Coils of copper. Switchboards behind him like something mechanical and dignified. He worked for the Postmaster-General's Department, then Telecom, and eventually Telstra —...
The Mental Cost of Thinking: Why Your Bias Patterns Matter More Than Your Traits
Most of us assume that better information leads to better decisions. It is a comforting idea: give people more data, clearer evidence, stronger arguments and better dashboards, and surely judgement will improve. But in complex environments, the problem is rarely a...