Introduction
As part of my doctoral studies into digital literacy I stumbled into something that saved my thesis: ambiguity. This blog will serve to document occasional updates to my sporadic research into this...
View ArticleThe name of the thing probably doesn’t matter
England and America are two countries separated by the same language. (George Bernard Shaw) My family first got a television with a remote control when I was about the same age as my now nine-year old...
View ArticleThe professional use of metaphor
Seth Godin on metaphor: The difference between the successful professional and the struggling amateur can often be seen in their respective facility with metaphor. The amateur struggles to accept that...
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Why ontologies are best left implicit (especially for credentials)
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major...
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Why brand will always trump process
In conversation with Audrey Watters and Kin Lane yesterday, I managed to articulate something that’s been bothering me for a while. This is my attempt to record that so I can refer to it later. I refer...
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What do we mean by ‘open education’?
Socrates must have been one of the most annoying individuals to ever walk the earth. I still don’t get why he didn’t just leave the city instead of drinking the hemlock at the end of his life. Also,...
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Robert Greene on the importance of ambiguity in creative endeavours
I’m re-reading Robert Green’s The Concise Mastery at the moment. Just now, I was struck by this passage: Perhaps the greatest impediment to human creativity is the natural decay that sets in over time...
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Reambiguation
The Team Human podcast is a recent must-listen for me. One of the most recent episodes features Mushon Zer-Aviv on the concept of ‘reambiguation’. His starting point is that we should resist attempts...
View ArticleOn vagueness, or, when is a heap of sand not a heap of sand?
Nothing new here for anyone who’s studied Philosophy, but still worth sharing for a general audience: A vague word such as ‘heap’ is used so loosely that any attempt to locate its exact boundaries has...
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Vagueness, ambiguity, and pragmatism
One of my favourite things about the Web is the ease at which serendipity occurs. We take it for granted these days but occasionally wonderful things happen that make us rediscover the joy of...
View ArticleWhat we know about ‘knowledge’
There’s an ongoing flamewar between traditionalists and progressives, who believe that education should either be about ‘knowledge’ or about ‘skills’. This has been going on, in various forms, at least...
View ArticleBusiness bullshit and ambiguity
In this week’s BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed, there’s an important part about ambiguity: Laurie Taylor explores the origins and purpose of ‘Business Bullshit’, a term coined by Andre Spicer,...
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A philosophical approach to joining organisations
Consultants like me are sometimes engaged by clients on a very short-term basis, and sometimes embedded inside organisations for much longer periods of time. Yesterday, I started a period of...
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On the lack of ambiguity at the heart of ‘Open Core’
There’s a couple of articles it might be worth reading to give some background to this post: The Internet Relies on People Working for Free (OneZero)The community-led renaissance of open source...
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Decision-making and ambiguity
Given the news of the passing of Terry Jones, it seems appropriate to kick things off with one of my favourite parts of any Monty Python film: Specifically: ARTHUR: Who lives in that castle? WOMAN: No...
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