*Delighted* by number 6!

i agree! interesting that software formalises the "doctrine" part into a job role whilst everyone else has the job of balancing doctrine and context all day, decision by decision

thank you!

thanks! i might!

thank you! def worth checking out Le Suite—bold and maybe overambitious, but v interesting to see it happening

I think the real lesson to draw from Palantir's many contracts is that government has on the whole so successfully driven away talent that those who show up capable and incentivised to engage with the real problems seem like manna from heaven—& worth the ££££ and the lock-in. We should look to that!

Whereas a module that Palantir chooses to extract and add to their platform is just proprietary software. It's clever: they've harnessed the network effects of a open-source like ecosystem with a completely closed commercial model. Good business! And walled gardens surely have advantages.

That irreducible difference is the space where the design system and friends enable us to play very productively, and those assets are ours.

These are imperfect means to capture "solutions". But there's an irreducible difference between being solving one problem and having a generic solution to more than one—indeed the latter makes for the bad old consultancy model ZS contrasts unfavourably with Palantir's.

ZS observes that for "indie consultants" "there’s no one extracting the patterns. The knowledge compounds in their heads... but it doesn’t get productised. It doesn’t create leverage." We do have that though: open source, the design system, the service manual.

this excellent paper has a section called “From antipolitical AI to political AI”? read.dukeupress.edu/public-cultu...

what a brilliant essay. amongst many other things, i’m definitely having “thick” and “thin” construction🧎

There are definitely more, especially on interop and open standards!

5. Good software does not make the world worse by deliberately enabling violence or injustice.

4. Good software remains attentive to the needs of its users throughout its lifetime.

3. Good software does not force its user to deviate from standard operating procedures (e.g. just run a process in a container) without very good reason.

2. Good software does not pursue lock-in. It seeks to actively participate in open standards and to improve them where tasteful and appropriate. Ideally it does not need to care what its own commercial model is.