Interesting elsewhere – 21 June 2013

In defence of bright ideas from people who have absolutely no idea how to implement them | The Source Blog
I’m worried that there will come a day, ten years or so from now, when teams of brilliant implementers are sitting around itching to implement the living daylights out of something, if only they could find a few bright sparks who couldn’t organise a fire in a tinderbox, to give them something to implement.

Schneier on Security: More on Feudal Security
Medieval feudalism evolved into a more balanced relationship in which lords had responsibilities as well as rights. Today’s Internet feudalism is both ad hoc and one-sided. We have no choice but to trust the lords, but we receive very few assurances in return. The lords have a lot of rights, but few responsibilities or limits. We need to balance this relationship, and government intervention is the only way we’re going to get it. In medieval Europe, the rise of the centralized state and the rule of law provided the stability that feudalism lacked. The Magna Carta first forced responsibilities on governments and put humans on the long road toward government by the people and for the people.

We need a similar process to rein in our Internet lords, and it’s not something that market forces are likely to provide. The very definition of power is changing, and the issues are far bigger than the Internet and our relationships with our IT providers.

My bleak tech reality: You can’t trust anyone or anything, anymore • The Register
Virtually everything we work with on a day-to-day basis is built by someone else. Avoiding insanity requires trusting those who designed, developed and manufactured the instruments of our daily existence.

All these other industries we rely on have evolved codes of conduct, regulations, and ultimately laws to ensure minimum quality, reliability and trust. In this light, I find the modern technosphere’s complete disdain for obtaining and retaining trust baffling, arrogant and at times enraging.

Unsettled — euansemple.com
I am aware that a lot of the people I work with feel unsettled about what is happening around them. Whether it is the web and the impact of social tools, or the volatility of organisational life, more of us face more turmoil and change than we might like. But this feeling isn’t likely to go away. We are not going to prevent life from forcing change on us. We need to learn ways to cope.