This is not so much a weeknote as a “two-year note” — an attempt to pull together the different strands of work we’re doing at Careful Industries and our (very new) not-for-profit arm, Promising Trouble and explain why we’re doing it. Like everyone always says, we’re working on our website, but I’ve scattered links to some of our projects through this post.
How we got here
I set-up Careful Industries (by which I mean I bought the domain name and did the paperwork at Companies House) two years ago last week. …
A new project to show a plurality of possible futures, rooted in communities not board rooms.
Very often, the people who get to tell the most plausible and the most listened to stories about the future — the people who get to set the tone and the parameters for others’ expectations — are the ones with the most traditional power. The Civil Society Foresight Observatory is an experiment in doing that differently.
I’m really excited that Careful Industries will be working with the Innovation, Policy and Practice team at the National Lottery Community Fund for the next six months to…
Let’s make a scene and rebel against Big Tech
This is more or less what I meant to say at a talk I gave at Nerd Nite this week called “Can we occupy technology with love?”. It follows on from a short blog post I wrote last year with the same title.
Can we occupy technology with love?
What do I mean by occupying technology? I mean, roughly, bending it to our will; taking advantage of its adaptivity to do something different.
To show what I mean, I’ll start with a few examples of ways technology has been rebelliously adapted.
The first is curator Marie Foulston’s…
This is a rundown of the course themes and structure, in case you want to recreate it at home.
What we learnt running the pilot | More about the programme
This programme was funded by Co-op Foundation, in partnership with Luminate
Before you dive in, it’s worth noting the videos here are live captures of sessions we ran from our homes during a pandemic; they haven’t been edited or given any post-production treatment. The lighting is variable, there may be cats, sometimes the recordings start very slightly after people have started speaking, and — in my case — you’ll get…
A short rundown of what the pilot was meant to achieve, what we did, and what we learnt
This programme was funded by Co-op Foundation, in partnership with Luminate
What we wanted to achieve
The aim of the programme was to see if we could inspire a group of dynamic community leaders in Greater Manchester to actively engage with the ways technology is changing society.
Why?
The active role that communities play in using, shaping, and tidying up after technology is often underestimated. But — as the pandemic has shown — the wisdom and generosity of neighbourhoods and informal networks, committed campaigners and established charities is…
Careful Industries is a microbusiness based in the UK, run by Rachel Coldicutt. We have a plan for gentle growth in 2021 and are looking for a freelance inclusive HR expert for a short, foundational project.
The Project
Work with Rachel to hire our first member of staff — our Operations Manager
- Effort and time frame: up to 5 days of consulting and delivery, to take place between late January and early March 2021
- Fee: c. £3,000
What is needed?
We need help to operationalise our values from the very beginning. Specifically, to:
- Ensure our initial policies and approach to hiring are inclusive, flexible, sustainable…
A non-technical guide to the likely social impact of the National Data Strategy
Anyone who knows me will know that I hate to write a long document — but, unfortunately, I had no choice. My policy briefing note on the National Data Strategy rather stretches the credibility of the word “note” (it is just under 6,000 words long), but there was a lot to say.
The briefing note attempts to explain the importance of the National Data Strategy for non-technical audiences, and summarises some of the social impacts. …
On Excel-gate and the UK government’s “quantitative revolution”
What gets mended matters
In 2014 I was working at a service-design agency, doing discovery interviews at a big utility company — talking to stakeholders and finding out what could be done to make their billing system compatible with the “smart” devices being rolled out by the marketing team.
After a few conversations, it became clear that all roads led back to two system administrators — two women who sat in an unbeloved office at the back of the building, the only people able to do the magic required to spit billing data out of the…
Data policy has important social implications and should not only be determined by technologists
Why is this important?
The National Data Strategy might sound like a very technical thing; in reality it is a document that sets out a vision for how information might flow through the UK economy, government and our public services. That information will be used to drive decisions that are made about people and things, and inform the design of products and services. So although this might be traditionally regarded as a piece of digital policy, it will also have implications for economic and social policy. …
Glimmers has been a real-time investigation into the relationship between technology and civil society.
Civil society is committed to “building back better” but for that to happen, it needs to be active and thriving — not exhausted and over-stretched.
In response to our findings, we have created the Glimmers Toolkit to aid recovery for civil society organisations, and are calling for a Community Tech Stack, so the future of digital social infrastructure is not dependent on either big technology platforms or start-up “unicorns”.
The full final report is available on the Glimmers website. Our findings and recommendations are summarised below.
Insight
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Rachel Coldicutt
Feminist. Responsible technologist. Reading and writing on equality, automation and climate crisis. On sabbatical-ish. Formerly @doteveryone .
