ANZAC Day and a multipolar world: what “lest we forget” means now
On ANZAC Day 2026 I remember the ordinary diggers behind the legend and reflect on Australia’s place in an emerging multipolar world, from Gallipoli to today’s conflicts.
AI, power, and why open institutions matter
Software and AI are never neutral; they can quietly lock in existing systems of control and power. To avoid surrendering autonomy to a few proprietary platforms, we need open, community‑governed institutions that keep AI accountable and share its benefits more fairly.
Beyond AI hype: building new institutions for AI and the Digital Revolution
In history I saw how the English working class responded to upheaval of the industrial revolution by building new institutions Today’s AI disruption raises a similar question: what new institutions do we need for the AI age?
Losing faith in the system: distrust, AI, and the turn to alternative beliefs
Etsy witches, AI, & young people quietly returning to the Catholic Church might look unrelated, but they all signal a crisis of trust in institutions.
Etsy witches, Claude’s mythos, and the strange mood we are in
Etsy witches, constitutional AI, and rising geopolitical risk are all symptoms of the same restless zeitgeist.
Australia’s data sovereignty ambitions will fail without research compute
Australia’s lack of serious, at‑scale compute is not just a research productivity problem, it is a sovereignty problem as well. Our universities are trying to do world‑class work on infrastructure that simply does not match the ambitions in our national AI strategies or data sovereignty rhetoric.
AI is now infrastructure: Why that changes everything
AI is no longer just a clever feature bolted onto apps - it’s fast becoming a core piece of digital infrastructure, as fundamental as electricity, networks and cloud.
AI Agents Are Here: How Memory, Emergence, and Governance Will Make or Break the Agent Era
The Agent Era Isn’t Coming. It's here and it’s Already Messy. I spent an interesting evening at an agentic AI meetup with old friends Mark Pesce and John Allsop in the wilds of Waterloo in a brewery the other night. It really got me thinking about
What we need to think about for effective AI governance
People keep asking me: “What do we actually do about AI governance?”
Data Governance needs a rebrand
I have long thought that data governance has a brand problem. Inside many organizations it still sounds like control, cost, and constraint, not value. Even when the underlying work is critical, the label “data governance” often lands with executives as bureaucracy: steering committees, policies, and standards that slow things down.
Life with ADHD: Time blindness, or why I lose hours, not just my keys
Time has always felt a bit … theoretical to me. People talk about “ten minutes” or “next week” as if these are solid, tangible things you can hold in your hand and stack neatly in a calendar. For those of us with ADHD, time is usually either “now” or “not now”
Agentic AI: How Voice-Driven Agents Are Changing the Way We Use Apps
I spoke at the Front End of Innovation (FEI) Conference in Boston back in June 2024 about AI, innovation and the future. I have been thinking a lot about this topic in the time since 2024 and now in early 2026. The future direction of Artificial Intelligence is not just