BUDGET tokens are the new luxury tokens! Yesterday, I heard a very interesting point from Wietse Hage on the AI Report podcast. Models shouldn’t be getting smarter and perhaps more destructive and sneaky, and therefore more expensive, but instead cheaper, reliable, smaller, and safer. So while we’re still buying luxury “Louis Vuitton” designer tokens, the…
With all the new digital-sovereignty projects and, of course, AI everywhere, the demand for Scapegoats™ is higher than ever! Let’s face it: they’re incredibly handy! Missed deadlines, political outrage, or panic situations? No problem! Move in your designated scapegoat, and before you know it, you’re heading for a reboot or pivot with minimal delay. A…
Quick report on the ThingsCon Salon in Rotterdam a week ago. This time the launch of ‘The State of Responsible IoT Report’, was the best excuse to listen to some of their contributers. And I was one of them. The Salon was gracefully hosted by the folks of Sociaal AI Lab Rotterdam. Really the report…
Yesterday I had an interesting revelation when talking to Ron in a future episode of It’s Just A Model: For a couple of years now Ron Kersic and I have been building a curriculum of innovative mindset, original thoughts and the (de)construction of models. It started with cup of coffee, and took shape as a…
Will humans become the “spice” on top of AI slop? That might be the saddest race to the bottom we’ve ever run. In our latest episode of It’s Just A Model, Ron Kersic and I dug into Cory Doctorow’s “reverse centaur” meme. As he put it: as AI floods the world with “stuff,” humans get…
Software design, building and maintenance has changed forever because of real-time generated, impromptu software using AI language models. The true impact on the software industry and its ecosystem, product quality and customer experience cannot be overstated. This shift is as important as the introduction of APIs, UI design and apps, only more so. Quick recap:…
Such a wonderful read on the state of responsible tech! If you’ve ever been to ThingsCon events, this report and its authors will look familiair. If you are not familiair, this report will help you navigate a slew of new perspectives on tech, society, behavior, design and philosophy. RIOT also provides more interesting perspectives, background…
We are stuck in BIG BAD TECH TUNNEL VISION, and we need to SNAP OUT OF IT before its too late. A lot of people gleefully exclaim that they are “against BIG Tech”. Although satisfying, in the long run this protest joy will get us nowhere, it’s too easy, its virtue signaling. We are stuck…
One perfect way to explain generative AI is that we “build worlds with prose”. A little story that discribes the rules of the world, and what it looks and acts like. The result: an imagination driven by your storytelling skills. “Building Worlds With Prose” was coined by Ron Kersic in one of our podcast episodes…
With the recent announcements on google search we can now start to approach some software as ‘fast fashion’, or disposable software. And this has some crucial consequences how we regard the making of software and how, or rather if we need to build software to last. Google broke with the tradition of lists in your…
Failing software under the cloak of innovation. I’ve been building software and digital products and services for 30 years now, and that digital cloak is exactly where things go wrong. It makes people invisible, makes dialogue impossible, and silences ordinary everyday people. AND NO ONE SEES IT. Money in your pocket. Do you still have…
I just love conversations with Ron Kersic. Out of the blue he introduces wonderful terms like “Luxury Tokens”. It must be one of my favorites and comparing it with handbags… chefs-kiss. I just had to make this image to fit the meme. Ron and I talk about luxury tokens in our podcast It’s Just A…
It was quite wonderful, but …. Here’s a short share of my experience at PublicSpaces Conference last Friday. To dive right into it: the speakers at this conference spoke about the urgency and acuteness of various themes in Europe and the world. At the conference people could consider the function and speak about their interest…
The definition of madness is no change, and still expect different outcomes. A few decades ago Brian Eno made a stack of wonderful ‘oblique strategies’: cars with strategies that change your perspective, actions, force you to do, view, act, make different. I printed this pack of strategies, so I can take it with me, when…
With SUSE in the private-equity shop window, another crucial part of sovereign infrastructure is once again at risk. We hear: “Surely this can’t be allowed?!” and “Surely this shouldn’t be possible?!” or “Why don’t we stop it?” Well, nice sentiment… but what exactly should be done, and by whom? Should the government compete with private…
Okay, if you want to apply for a job at EU focussed organisations like Interpoll, it’s wise to have a resume document that fits their robot parser AND IT’S A DOOZY! Because most resumes are unfit and will leave you hand-inputting all the data. So this is what I did. I asked AI to solve…
The generalist in your project, as your guide and your creative sense is a powerfull asset. As such AI has just proven the imminent danger and the power of a generalist mind as a threat to ANY security flaw in ANY digital and human environment. With a sneak peak of Claude Mythos Preview, we’ve got…
Europe is finally waking up to a dangerous reality: even inside its own borders, trillions of euros still move through foreign-controlled payment empires. For the European Union, this is about far more than payments. Heavy dependence on large foreign, mainly American, financial companies such as Visa and Mastercard is increasingly seen as a direct threat…
AI may be the most powerful accelerator of creativity since the 3D printer. In the 11th episode of It’s Just A Model, cohost Ron and I arrived at a new way of thinking about what AI really makes possible: for all intents and purposes, we can now think things into existence; we can manifest things…
Germany has decided: Microsoft document formats have no place in government. Deadline: 2027–2028. The Microsoft formats are simply not compatible with an open and transparent public sector. However, this is about more than file formats. It’s about control, resilience, and sovereignty in public digital infrastructure. After various attempts, Germany will finally begin moving away from…