I’ve been busy this week so here you are, some scraps from my notes file.
There’s a legal right called equality of arms. So both parties should have a similar right to cross-examination, for example. But also this is where legal aid comes from: the state will pay for legal representation for people it’s prosecuting because of this principle.
Should we have equality of arms in elections?
Give all parties their own Russia disinfo bot farm.
My computer just pinged. Goodness only knows what about.
I want to be able to point to it from across the room and yell WHAT did you say?
(And have it answer.)
How did companies work before computers?
I listened to an episode of The Men from the Ministry which is a middling-to-awful BBC radio comedy about government bureaucracy that ran from 1962 to 1977. (Confession: I love it.)
Mildred, the secretary, gets promoted to being an acting junior executive and mentions that she now receives “action forms”. i.e. things that she has to do.
“Action forms” aren’t explained so I assume this is a well-understood term of art, like saying “spreadsheet” or “email”.
And I know bits and pieces of pre-computers bureaucracy – memos, runners, filing systems. But I’d love to know how it all hangs together.
(Because when we’re building virtual employees with squads of AI agents, optimising rivers of flows of information and action and making it observable, we’re basically implementing high-frequency bureaucracy.)
Then in today’s corporate world, we also have organs in the company body: people who “heads of” whose jobs are essentially to sit on a topic and be a combination of (a) knowledge and (b) a Schelling point – so in an organisation, if you want to know how X works, you can talk to that person, and they will also act as a requirements gathering node or router. But they’re really employed to be a single face that other people can attach to an abstract topic and have a human salience sense for information and making connections.
Do we also have a typology of those kinds of roles?
How do companies actually work? Old ones and new ones. Book recommendations please.
Cereal boxes no longer say contents may settle in transit.
It always used to be printed on the side.
I wonder when that phase was removed, and for what reason, and on whose say-so. And how many meetings it took.
I’ve been busy this week so here you are, some scraps from my notes file.
There’s a legal right called equality of arms. So both parties should have a similar right to cross-examination, for example. But also this is where legal aid comes from: the state will pay for legal representation for people it’s prosecuting because of this principle.
Should we have equality of arms in elections?
Give all parties their own Russia disinfo bot farm.
My computer just pinged. Goodness only knows what about.
I want to be able to point to it from across the room and yell WHAT did you say?
(And have it answer.)
How did companies work before computers?
I listened to an episode of The Men from the Ministry which is a middling-to-awful BBC radio comedy about government bureaucracy that ran from 1962 to 1977. (Confession: I love it.)
Mildred, the secretary, gets promoted to being an acting junior executive and mentions that she now receives “action forms”. i.e. things that she has to do.
“Action forms” aren’t explained so I assume this is a well-understood term of art, like saying “spreadsheet” or “email”.
And I know bits and pieces of pre-computers bureaucracy – memos, runners, filing systems. But I’d love to know how it all hangs together.
(Because when we’re building virtual employees with squads of AI agents, optimising rivers of flows of information and action and making it observable, we’re basically implementing high-frequency bureaucracy.)
Then in today’s corporate world, we also have organs in the company body: people who “heads of” whose jobs are essentially to sit on a topic and be a combination of (a) knowledge and (b) a Schelling point – so in an organisation, if you want to know how X works, you can talk to that person, and they will also act as a requirements gathering node or router. But they’re really employed to be a single face that other people can attach to an abstract topic and have a human salience sense for information and making connections.
Do we also have a typology of those kinds of roles?
How do companies actually work? Old ones and new ones. Book recommendations please.
Cereal boxes no longer say
It always used to be printed on the side.
I wonder when that phase was removed, and for what reason, and on whose say-so. And how many meetings it took.