In 1936 a 20 year-old Claude Shannon came to MIT from the University of Michigan to work with Vannevar Bush on his differential analyser, an early, room-sized mechanical computer. This analog computing machine could solve differential equations through a series of rotating [ ] The post The age of the expert generalist appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
By the early 1980s the General Motors assembly plant in Fremont California was widely regarded to be the worst performing car manufacturing site in the U.S. The company had a huge employee engagement problem with absenteeism regularly running at over 20%, and [ ] The post Why AI fluency doesn t scale appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
In 1793 Eli Whitney invented a machine that could separate cotton fibers from their sticky seeds. The ‘Cotton Gin’ (short for ‘Cotton Engine’) mechanised what was previously a hugely laborious and inefficient manual process and it transformed the textile industry almost overnight. [ ] The post Why AI shifts bottlenecks rather than remove them appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
On 4 May 1948, the US Supreme Court ruled in a landmark antitrust case that would change the way that Hollywood studios worked forever. Until that point the studios had owned everything, from the production lots, through to the cinemas that the [ ] The post The Great Unbundling of Work appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
In the late 19th Century sharpshooter Annie Oakley was one of the most popular acts within Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Annie would demonstrate her skills performing tricks like shooting the flames off candles and her grand finale, shooting the end off [ ] The post Technology, inflection points and cascading impacts appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
Every so often an essay or post comes along that when you read it, your only wish is that it had come from your brain and your keyboard. Packy McCormick’s Riding the Leopard was one such post for me. If you missed last week’s edition, [ ] The post On Getting Older, and Building Meaning appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
Most AI use today is open-loop. People prompt, get an output, use it, and move on, meaning that each interaction is consumed the moment it’s produced. Last week I wrote about AI as compounding capability in the context of agencies and operating models, but [ ] The post AI and the OODA Loop appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
I recently ran a morning session at the ICOM World Meeting in Porto on the new operating model for advertising agencies. ICOM is the global network for independent agencies and the room was full of agency founders and leaders from markets around the world. [ ] The post The New Agency Operating Model appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
Years ago, when I first read (Pixar co-founder) Ed Catmull’s brilliant book Creativity Inc, I remember really loving their ‘Braintrust’ idea. This is where a group of Pixar’s finest creative brains come together regularly to review outputs and provide candid, constructive feedback on films [ ] The post Creating an AI Braintrust appeared first on Only Dead Fish .
If there’s one phrase that best expresses the two-way nature of the relationship between humanity and technology it’s probably Father John Culkin’s quote (often attributed to Marshall McLuhan): ‘We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us’. Humans create the technology, but [ ] The post The AI Inevitability Trap appeared first on Only Dead Fish .