Jan 1

Jan 1 The Bowl of Curiosities: 1 January 2019

In the Bowl of Curiosities, I keep the objects that catch my attention or peak my curiosity. In 2019, my intention is to be disciplined about curating and publishing the things I find interesting.

The image for this post is by Susan Yin and is available from Unsplash

Article(s) of Interest

This section has articles that I read, and thought were interesting. This one is a bit longer than it should be because I was on holiday and a lot of end of year ‘top 10’ lists came out.

I had never heard of the Free Energy Principle until I read the following article by Shaun Raviv in Wired Magazine. The article relates the story of a man and his idea—Karl Friston and the Free Energy Principle.

Raviv’s article makes a dense idea accessible. It is worth a read just from the perspective that Karl Friston is an interesting person who has led an interesting life, and along the way he has made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the brain.

Free Energy Principle

Shaun Raviv , The genius neuroscientist who might hold the key to true AI, Wired Magazine, 13 November 2018

I did get a bit obsessed by the Free Energy Principle. If you are interested, other related reading follows.

Karl Friston, The free-energy principle: a rough guide to the brain?

Wikipedia, Free Energy Principle

If you can access them, I also had a look at these academic articles:

Constant, A ; Ramstead, M J D ; Veissière, S P L ; Campbell, J O ; Friston, K J, A variational approach to niche construction, Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, April 2018, Vol.15(141)

Ramstead, M J D ; Badcock, PB; Friston, K J, Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation, Physics of life reviews, March 2018, Vol.24, pp.1-16

[Note: there was a lot of follow-up response to this article.]

Information Security

Two good and interesting articles on information security. Both involve deliberate and malicious behaviour but they start from very different motivations. Together, they give an insight into the breadth of the information security risk.

Andy Greenberg, 22 August 2018, The untold story of the Notpetya, the most devastating cyberattack in history

Brendan Koerner, 17 April 2018, The young and the reckless

Biology

“Like a brain, an ant colony operates without central control. Each is a set of interacting individuals, either neurons or ants, using simple chemical interactions that in the aggregate generate their behaviour. People use their brains to remember. Can ant colonies do that? This question leads to another question: what is memory?”

Deborah Gordon, An ant colony has memories that its individual members don’t have

From the Library

There are so many leadership and management books produced every year. Most, in my view, are filled with meaningless drivel. So, I am revisiting the books that shaped my thinking about people, work and organisation.

Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman, 2013

Strategy is something leaders do. Unfortunately, strategy has become one of those words that has lost all meaning through indiscriminate overuse. Everything and everyone seem to be (or want to be seen to be) ‘strategic’!

Strategy, for me, is how we deal with uncertainty. Ultimately, the goal of strategy is to shape behaviour. There is also a real difference between a strategy and a plan that is often lost in translation. Freedman puts it like this:

A plan supposes a sequence of events that allows one to move with confidence from one state of affairs to another. Strategy is required when others might frustrate one’s plans because they have different and possible opposing interests and concerns.

Freedman’s book has been a good reference for me. It takes a sweeping view of strategy from the Bible through military strategy through political strategy through business strategy to arrive at a top down and a bottom up view of strategy.

It’s a big book, but it’s a good book.

Ghost Stories

I have had a copy of ‘Ghost: 100 stories to read with the lights on’ by Louise Welsh on my bedside table for, maybe, three years. I don’t remember buying it. I only dip into Ghost infrequently and have made no progress in getting through the 100 short stories. In 2019, I intend to work my way through this book and document my progress here.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Captain Walton’s Final Letter (extract from Frankenstein, 1818)

Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am dizzy with the remembrance of it.

Maybe not a ‘Ghost Story’ in the traditional sense, but a good read.

You can find some background trivia to the Mary Shelly and the Frankenstein story here: Eight things you need to know about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Conversation, 15 March 2018, .

Progress on Projects

I always start the New Year with a list projects I would like to complete. I never finish them. Sometimes, I don’t start. I just sort of potter around them deluding myself that progress is being made.

This year, I have three projects I am interested in advancing. My intention is to report my thinking and progress here.

Project 1: Finding Meaning at Work (with Sally Dorsett)

Sally and I work together. We meet a lot of people who are unhappy at work and we meet lots of others who are having a great time. We became interested in why work feels meaningful for some but not for others. So, Sally and I are doing some research, which will include talking to people through interviews, focus groups and workshops to help us explore the issues. We are not the first to tread this path (nor will we be the last) but we are interested enough to put on our pith helmets and go exploring.

Project 2: Trust and Technology

I have long been interested in both ‘trust’, ‘networks’, and ‘technology’. I have written on these subjects for most of my working life. When I have read or written about technology and work, trust is always lurking around in the background. It seems to me that how we make sense of and practice trust is becoming central to everything we design and do. I think this has implications for how we organise and work. I’m not sure where this one is going.

Project 3. Meditations on Faith, Hope, Leadership and Management

I have long been interested in the word ‘Faith’. Recently, I have also become interested in the philosophy that swirls around the word ‘Hope’. Faith and Hope travel together but they are uneasy companions. I am extending my interest in these words and relating it to what I do to help people, work and organisations be better. It should manifest as essays on this site under the title, ‘Meditations on Faith, Hope, Leadership and Management’. We’ll see!

A Thought to End

I would like to end with someone else’s thought. In this case, William Blake. London was published in ‘Songs of Experience’ in 1794. I read it reasonably regularly.

London by William Blake

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet,

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry

Every black'ning Church appalls;

And the hapless Soldier’s sigh