Furniture

The design of organisations and products →Go uptown Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Design Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Legal ops: We must innovate! We have earmarked technology budget to innovate!
JC: Great! How about some decent document comparison software? Microsoft’s comparison engine is rubbish.
Legal ops: We can’t use our fuinds on that. JC: Why not? Legal ops: Because it isn’t very innovative, is it? JC: Would it change your mind if I told you it runs on blockchjain? Legal ops: YES! Does it? JC: (pauses) Um, yes. Sure it does. Document Comparison Vendor: What? No it d — JC: Shut up if you want to win this contract. Legal ops: What was that? JC and Document Comparison Vendor (in unison): Nothing.

Technology should be part of the everyday. We should see it and touch it and use it all the time.

Stewart Brand has a great expression for this kind of technology: the “invisible present”. The problem is that technology which does integrate seamlessly into our lives doesn’t look like technology for very long. Email. Web browsers. Smartphones. Wikipedia. Google

It looks like *furniture*.

Things that persistently look like technology, we call “bad technology”. O Paradox.