Perspective

Two weeks ago, Andrew Jacobs posted a question on LinkedIn about 'catchphrases' and what we thought our catchphrases would be... (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewjacobslnd_catchphrases-i-was-thinking-about-the-activity-7224380929857748992-SBde?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop ).

My answer was immediate and probably came as no surprise to him or some of his other readers.

It was this.

#LookUp (but you knew that already!)

And only a few days later, facebook reminded me of a post I did some 8 years ago, wherein I ‘cartooned’ the same catchphrase

So, if that’s my catchphrase, what does it mean?

Quite frankly, it’s in the eye of the beholder. If it resonates for anyone else, it’s probably related to their own personal or professional situation and experience.

For me, it means lifting my eyes up from what’s immediately in front of me, looking for other, wider perspectives.

My Instagram account’s full of photos looking up. I’m an armchair astronomer and satellite watcher. I’m nosy. If I’m out walking, be it in town, country or seaside, I’m always checking out the upper levels of buildings, the cloud patterns in the sky. If I’m visiting a National Trust or other heritage building, I look at the turrets and roofs from the outside and the ceilings and stairwells from the inside.

And I learn new things.

As a physical act, looking up requires me to shift my focus, from what’s directly in front of me, transitioning through to the distance ahead and onward up to the roof, the treetops and/or ‘the heavens’.

Spending much of my time, as I still do, in front of the laptop, taking a break from the close-up view (which is physically tiring on the eye muscles) relaxing them and looking into the distance and up is important. That very act invites reflection, a pause, an adjustment of perspective – and often presents some new insights.

You might also have noticed that sometimes ‘Look Up’ becomes ‘#LookUp’. It’s been one of my social media hashtags for years now. And it seems I’m not the only one – many people have posted on different social media channels using #LookUp as their hashtag.

Try searching for the #LookUp hashtag on your SoMe channels of choice and be inspired by others’ different perspectives. And maybe share a few of your own.

Fictional Intelligence

At the Learning Technologies Conference last week, there was a lot of discussion both in conference sessions and in the general social chat, about AI, Artificial Intelligence, in HR, L&D and OD. It's a maturing 'science', with an increasingly well-understood potential and some well-demonstrated examples. However, this post is not about that.

Image: Patricia Hebert

This post is about how science fiction (SF) is ahead of this particular game, and has been for far longer than we've been angsting about it. 

And the good news is that, contrary to traditional expectations of various dystopian futures (well, not entirely), the premise is that humanity has a huge part still to play - not necessarily in its/our classical form perhaps, but in working with and, in some cases, as part of the collaborative whole. OK, in many cases, we may not have been altogether willing participants initially (and that's more about some humans' inhumanity to some other humans, than anything else), but it's our basic humanity which acts as the conscience and the ultimate arbiter of how 'the machines'/AI work/will work.

In his keynote talk on Day 2 of the conference, Daniel Susskind (@danielsusskind) shared John Searle's Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal from February 2011, after IBM's Watson computer beat two human competitors in the TV game show 'Jeopardy' - "Watson Doesn't Know It Won on 'Jeopardy!'" (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703407304576154313126987674). His premise is that Watson doesn't think, it computes. By extension therefore, we could say that Watson doesn't care that it won Jeopardy.

But we care. And because we care, we can moderate, influence and thereby work with 'the machines'. We just have to learn to appreciate the value and insight they can bring to our work, so that we can learn to humanise the outcomes and realise the benefits.

To finish, just to say our reading doesn't always have to be entirely business or professionally focused for us to be able to draw out some analogous insights. Sometimes, it can just be for our own entertainment. If you'd like to escape into some recent great SF I've read which kinda supports my earlier points, whilst also being rattling good reads (Warning: Some war/violence, some human/animal hybrids, some human/machine over-familiarity), I can recommend the following (all available on Amazon): 

"Autonomous" - Annalee Newitz

"Dogs of War" - Adrian Tchaikovsky

"Ghosts of Tomorrow" - Michael R. Fletcher

Any other Fictional Intelligence recommendations please?