Dr Laura James's writings

Doteveryone announced that we are ending our work after five years of fighting for better tech, for everyone. We often said we’d wind up when our job was done, and certainly things have moved on in the world of responsible technology. Tech workers are starting to unionise. Mainstream media and public perception are very aware of bad tech issues. Policy is ramping up to respond. Businesses are changing, new startups are doing things differently. People are looking at alternatives and being pickier about tech. The job may not be completely done, but we have catalysed and provoked and informed, and started new forms of change, which the ODI and Ada will continue - organisations well placed for the next phase of work that is needed. We also demonstrated new ways organisations could achieve change - new ways to be - we were not just another think tank. Doteveryone existed because of Martha Lane-Fox and she has some great points now , as ever: We were always clear that we didn’t want to pro...

An unexpected project came up and eliminated weeknotes time last week, so a rather long set here. So many topics and ideas, it's impossible to map out the thinking and influence supply chains, on which more below. We've been planning the first Festival of Maintenance event for 2020, a delightfully transatlantic joint production with The Maintainers , looking at gig work - a precarious form of maintenance. Sign up to join us online on Wednesday 27th. Many of the best events I've been to have been held at Conway Hall in London - they are now seeking donations to keep going . Conway Hall Ethical Society is an independent charity and receives no regular government, Arts Council, or National Lottery Heritage funding. It seems important to have venues working with different aims, and Conway Hall is a terrific independent venue with a strong humanist and cooperative ethos which I've always appreciated. I enjoyed the first session of CSaP's annual conference , rendered th...

An eye-opening Twitter thread about a range of things the UK has done in response to the pandemic, which (most?) people don't seem to have commented on. The surprising level of openness of the 'lockdown' compared to similarly-named things elsewhere, or the total lack of official advice on how to care for someone with Covid-19 at home, for instance. (I'm less sure on whether the Nightingale hospitals were wasteful - not using reserve capacity is not necessarily a bad thing, but if they really don't have the equipment necessary for treatment, that seems very poor.) Vox describes some of the possible long term effects of Covid-19 , in case you didn't realise that nasty pneumonia-like viruses aren't just for a couple of weeks in many cases, or that there's lots we don't know about this one. Via Imran Khan, Fiona Fox writing for the Science Media Centre about whether pandemics need a different kind of journalism . I like the hashtag here - #humilityne...

Starting with digital miscellany:  Bruce Schneier is using Zoom (although the comments are not happy about this, in the main). All security is trade-offs. Really just for the headline, because there are no surprises here: Three things in life are certain: Death, taxes, and cloud-based IoT gear bricked by vendors. Looking at you, Belkin. Farewell Wemo cams. The Open source hardware user group (OSHUG) has been going for ten years, or thereabouts . Thanks Andrew Back for writing up some of the history - a lot of familiar faces and projects there! You can now get a Fairphone with an alternative OS (/e/OS).   There's a good write up on Ars. OPEN.coop 's online programming in lieu of the usual annual event included a webinar from the denizens of the Digital Life Collective. It was good to see many familiar faces, and to hear where things have got to with "collaboration as a service." Still a slightly overwhelming range of metaphors and structures, but nice to...