My world,

our world,

your world,

may change

tonight

The city was clean and the money was good. Steel and glass buildings knifed into the blue morning sky as Wilson walked to work. His shoes clicked against swept pavements. The people wore good clothes and good watches. Everyone was looking at their screens. No one looked up. No one saw the sky.

Wilson’s flat was in the new district. He had a view of the river. The river was clean now, they said. No one swam in it. The economic metrics were positive for the eighth consecutive quarter.

In the lobby of his building, the projections played on every wall. Election coverage. Another cycle, another storm of faces and voices and promises. Polls and predictions. Wilson knew the faces. Everyone knew the faces.

“Morning, Wilson,” Jenkins said. Jenkins was always at his desk early. He had three screens running election simulations.

“Morning.”

“Did you see the polls? Chamberlain’s up two points.”

“I saw.”

“Massive. If he holds through the weekend, Lambert’s finished.”

Wilson nodded and went to his desk. He did not care about Chamberlain or Lambert. They wore different coloured ties. That was the difference he could see.

His company made prediction software. They sold it to news organisations, to corporations, to the parties themselves. The software was good. It predicted things. People liked predictions. They were comforting.

At lunch, Wilson went to the canteen. The projections played there too. A pundit was gesturing with his hands. Wilson could not hear the words. He did not need to. The words were always the same.

“You see this?” Miller asked. Miller sat down with his tray. His food was untouched. “Chamberlain’s team released their economic plan. It’s going to destroy Lambert.”

“You think so?”

“The algorithm gives it an 82% chance of swinging three percent of undecideds.”

Wilson ate his sandwich. It was not a bad sandwich. The bread was fresh. The meat was processed but good.

“We’re all going to Henley’s to watch the debate tonight,” Miller said. “You should come.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on, man. It’s the most important election of our lifetimes.”

Miller believed this. Wilson had heard it before. It was always the most important election.

“I’ve got plans,” Wilson said. He did not have plans.

The afternoon moved slowly. Wilson wrote code. The code would make the predictions more accurate. Two percent more accurate. This was valuable. The company’s stock would rise.

At five, Wilson shut down his terminal. The others were gathering their things. They would go to Henley’s. They would watch the debate. They would cheer and groan.

“Sure you won’t join?” Jenkins asked.

“Enjoy it,” Wilson said.

Outside, the evening was cool. Wilson did not go home. He walked to the old part of the city. The buildings were lower there. Some were made of brick. The economic metrics were not as positive in this district.

He came to a small building with no sign. Brick. Old. Real. Inside, there was a room with chairs arranged in a circle. People were sitting there. No projections played on the walls. No one held a screen. The room smelled of coffee and dust and human bodies.

“Wilson,” Anna said. She was thin with dark hair. Her eyes were tired but clear. Her hands were calloused. “We’re about to start.”

Wilson took a seat in the circle. There were twelve people. They were strangers and yet they were not.

“My name is Frank,” an old man said. “Yesterday I saw my neighbour struggling with his groceries. I held the door. We ended up talking about football for twenty minutes in the hallway.”

The others nodded.

“I’m Elena,” a young woman said. “I let someone merge in front of me in traffic today. The driver waved. I waved back. For a moment we were not just machines passing each other.”

“James,” said a man in work clothes. “I noticed a new hire looking lost at lunch. I sat with him. He’s from out of town. Knows no one here.”

“My name is Mei,” said a woman in her thirties. “I made eye contact with the barista this morning. Asked her name. She seemed surprised. Said no one ever asks.”

Around the circle they went. Small stories. Normal moments. Real things done by real hands. No grand gestures. Just humans acknowledging humans.

When it was Wilson’s turn, he spoke. “My name is Wilson. Yesterday I was afraid to speak to the homeless man outside my building. Today I did. His name is Thomas. He was a carpenter once. I’m going to bring him coffee tomorrow.”

Anna smiled at him. It was a real smile. Not a projection.

“This is the real work,” Anna said when they had all spoken. “This is the real power. Not the faces on the screens. Not the coloured ties. Not the predictions. The way we are with each other. That’s the society we live in.”

“They’d call this insignificant,” said the old man, Frank. “Small acts. They want grand gestures. Movements. Victories.”

“A million small acts make a world,” Anna said. “Always have. The headlines never mention the person who holds the door.”

Later, they left together. There were no screens in Anna’s flat. They made dinner. The knife made a sound when it hit the board. The water boiled in a real way. They talked. They were not afraid of silence.

“They’ll all be watching the debate,” Wilson said.

“Let them watch.” Anna passed him a plate. “We’ll be here, living.”

In the morning, Wilson would learn who had won the debate. The metrics would be clear. The predictions would adjust. The faces would still be there, talking, promising, demanding attention.

But for now, he was here, chopping vegetables with Anna, the knife solid in his hand, the sound of it on the cutting board like something real in a world of projections.

It was not a bad world, Wilson thought. The money was good. The river was clean, they said. But there was another world inside it, waiting. A world where people looked up from their screens. A world built not by the faces on the walls but by hands and voices and small, human kindnesses.

That was the world he chose, night after night, in this room with no projections. While the algorithms ran and the pundits talked and everyone waited for someone else to save them or doom them. While they all believed that power was something far away, something you could only watch, never touch.

Outside, the streets pulsed with election news. The buildings were full of people waiting to be rescued by the right coloured tie. Meanwhile, Frank talked football with his neighbour. Elena acknowledged another driver’s humanity. James sat with someone who was alone. Mei asked a barista her name. Wilson would bring coffee to Thomas tomorrow.

The choice was always there. It was the simplest thing and the hardest thing. To look up. To see. To touch the real world with your hands.

To be the society you wished to live in.

Margin of Error was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

They had told him it would be simple. Just like taking a photograph, they said. A copy of his mind that would live on. The doctor had explained it sitting across from him at the metal desk in the white room with the window that looked out over the sea.

“You won’t feel a thing, Mr. Harrington,” the doctor said. “The scan is painless.”

“And afterwards?” he asked.

“Afterwards you go home. Your copy goes to the new system.”

“And I will be in both places.”

The doctor hesitated. “Not exactly. You will still be you. The copy will be… the copy.”

He did not like the way the doctor paused, but he signed the papers. The cancer was in his bones now. The pain was constant and the morphine made him foggy. This way, some version would continue.

They used a large machine that hummed. It was cold in the room. There was a technician who spoke little and typed on a keyboard. When it was done, they helped him dress and called a taxi.

“When will I meet him?” he asked.

“Meet who, Mr. Harrington?”

“The other me.”

“Oh, that’s not advisable,” the doctor said. “Studies show it creates psychological distress for both parties.”

But he had never been one to follow advice. He bribed a technician. He learned the access codes. On Tuesday, when the pain was less, he took a cab to the facility where they kept the new bodies with the copied minds.

His copy sat in a garden. It was strange to see himself from the outside. The copy looked healthier. They had built the new body without the cancer. The copy was reading Turgenev, a book he had always meant to finish.

“Hello,” he said.

The copy looked up. There was recognition and then something like disappointment in the copy’s eyes.

“They said you might come,” the copy said.

They sat together on the bench. It was awkward at first, like meeting a twin he had never known. They talked about the books they had read. They remembered the same childhood dog, the same first kiss under the apple tree with Sarah Winters. The copy knew about the night in Madrid when he had been too afraid to swim in the hotel pool after drinking too much wine. They shared the same memories, the same regrets.

But then the copy spoke of new things. Of how the sunrise looked from this garden, of the nurse with the kind eyes who brought tea in the afternoons, of the taste of strawberries that morning.

“I’ve never liked strawberries,” he said.

“I didn’t either,” said the copy. “But they taste different now.”

They met again the next week, and the week after. Each time, the divergence was greater. The copy was learning French. The copy had made friends with an old professor who lived in the next room. The copy was writing poetry.

“I never wrote poetry,” he said.

“I never had time before,” said the copy.

His own pain was worse now. The doctor said it would not be long. The copy knew this without being told.

On his last visit, it was raining. The copy held an umbrella over both of them as they walked the grounds.

“I’m afraid,” he said. It was the first time he had admitted it to anyone.

The copy nodded. “I know.”

“You’ll continue.”

“Yes.”

“But I won’t be there to see it.”

The copy stopped walking. “No. You won’t.”

He had thought having a copy would be like extending his own life. Now he understood the truth. The copy would live on, would see more sunrises, would finish learning French, would perhaps fall in love again. But he would not experience any of it. The divergence was complete.

“I thought it would be me,” he said. “Both of us, me.”

“I thought so too,” said the copy. “At first.”

They stood under the umbrella in the rain. Two men who had once been the same, now facing different directions. One towards more life, one towards none.

When it was time to leave, the copy embraced him. It was like embracing himself and a stranger at the same time.

“Goodbye,” said the copy.

“Goodbye,” he said.

He rode the cab back to his empty flat. He did not go to the facility again.

The Other Self was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I saw.
I realised.
I felt, then knew.
That all phenomena
Arise interdependently.

If a moment can last forever,
That’s what happened that summer.

Subsequently, the newest normal encroached
and my sense of the arising waned…

Cortisol days
Faster ways
First quarter
Third quarter
Mood boiled
Brain toiled
The prize recoiled
before we noticed.

So here we are
A crew without a ship
A team without a ground
Familia slowly strangered
Soon estranged
Yet proud

For now.
We pass.
We move.

On.

On to new whats.
On to new whos.
New whys …

Goodbyes.

Why LMScript?

For a while now, I’ve been frustrated by the narrative surrounding AI, particularly large language models. There’s this persistent idea that AI is here to replace us, to make human skills obsolete. But that’s not how I see it. I’m more aligned with Marshall McLuhan’s view of technology as an extension of ourselves.

LMScript is my response to this narrative. It’s a tool designed to augment our capabilities, not replace them. With LMScript, I wanted to create something that would help people interact with LLMs more effectively and efficiently, turning these powerful AI models into collaborative partners rather than potential replacements.

Democratizing AI Interaction

One of my core goals with LMScript was accessibility. I wanted to create something that anyone could use, anywhere, without needing coding experience or paid accounts. In a world where AI capabilities are becoming increasingly crucial, I believe it’s essential to level the playing field. LMScript is my small contribution to democratizing AI interaction.

A Performance of Ideas

In many ways, creating LMScript felt like a performance. It was a way of expressing and exploring ideas I’ve been pondering about our relationship with technology. It’s not just a tool; it’s a conceptual piece that questions how we interact with AI and what that interaction could look like in the future.

Collaborating with AI to Create an AI Tool

Perhaps the most meta aspect of developing LMScript was collaborating with AI assistants in the process. I worked with ChatGPT-4 and Claude, using their capabilities to help organize my ideas and extend the concepts I was working with. This experience was a vivid demonstration of the kind of human-AI collaboration I’m aiming to facilitate with LMScript.

Navigating Power Dynamics

During the development process, I had an interesting interaction with Claude that made me reflect on the power dynamics at play. Claude pointed out that there’s a complex relationship between the system I inhabit (as a human developer) and the system the LLM represents. This observation has stuck with me, and I’m still contemplating how to address this in future versions of LMScript. It’s a reminder that as we develop these tools, we need to be mindful of the implicit power structures we might be creating or reinforcing.

Looking Ahead

As I continue to develop and refine LMScript, I see it as more than just a practical tool. It’s a proof of concept for rapid AI tool development, a platform for exploring human-AI collaboration, and hopefully, a catalyst for discussions about our relationship with AI systems.

In this AI-driven world we’re moving into, I believe it’s crucial that we develop tools thoughtfully, always keeping the human element at the center. With LMScript, I’m not just asking what AI can do, but how we want to interact with it and what role we want it to play in our lives and work.

LMScript is my vision of a future where humans and AI are true collaborators, each enhancing the capabilities of the other. It’s an exciting vision, and one that I hope will contribute to shaping the future of human-AI interaction.

As I continue to work on this project, I’m excited to see how others will use and adapt LMScript. After all, it’s released under a Creative Commons license because I believe in the power of community-driven development. I’m looking forward to seeing how this tool evolves and what new ideas it might inspire.

In the end, LMScript is more than just a weekend project. It’s my contribution to an ongoing dialogue about AI, human capability, and the future of work and creativity. I hope it sparks thought, inspires innovation, and maybe, just maybe, helps reshape our relationship with AI for the better.

Bootstrapping a writing language was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

and lost.

What if? was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“In trying to climb out
of the pits we’ve dug ourselves,
the pit becomes resilient.
In trying to escape the prison,
the prison gains its form.”
 — Bayo Akomolafe

Imagine a forest, a complex web of organic life, where every tree, bush, and critter has a unique role to play. Over time, the forest adapts to the shifting seasons, the availability of sunlight, and the water cycle. The forest is not just a collection of elements; it’s a well-evolved system that grows and adapts to fit its conditions.

Just like this forest, organisations are also systems — complex, living structures composed of people, processes, and technologies. As a strategic designer, one might even say that these organisations are adaptive systems that are “fit for purpose” in their specific business environments. So, what happens when we decide we need to change?

The Fallacy of Element-Centric Change

Traditionally, organisations focus on changing the elements within the system — hiring new talent, implementing new technologies, or redesigning workflows. However, these interventions often lead to underwhelming outcomes. Why?

Because the systemic conditions that produced the old way of working remain unchanged.

In this realm, change management efforts are like someone who merely trims the branches of an overgrown tree, expecting it to magically become a different species altogether. The root system, the soil quality, and the climate — i.e., the external conditions — remain the same. The tree’s DNA and other internal conditions — are unchanged.

Organisational Immune Systems

Organisations have an “immune system,” a set of ingrained behaviours, cultural norms, and operational structures that are extremely resilient to change. When you introduce new elements, the organisational immune system often kicks in to adapt around these foreign agents. You could call this the organisation’s own survival instinct, a form of “corporate homeostasis”.

Because this organisational immune system is programmed to maintain stability and resist deviation from established norms, attempts to implement element-centric change are often rejected or diluted to the point of insignificance.

Shifting the Conditions, Not Just Elements

So, how do we make change work? By understanding that the forest and its trees are part of the same ecosystem. The trick is to not just focus on individual elements, but to also address the underlying conditions that have evolved to sustain the current state of affairs.

For instance, if a company’s culture prioritises short-term profits over long-term outcomes, introducing new sustainability initiatives will likely face resistance. Instead of merely launching these initiatives, the organisation would need to alter the conditions — perhaps by changing performance metrics, restructuring incentive systems, or even evolving the organisational culture itself to value outcomes over outputs.

Change as a Design Challenge

This perspective views organisational change as a strategic design challenge, requiring an understanding of the complex interplay between the elements and the conditions. It’s not just about “solving a problem,” but rather about “reconfiguring a system,” akin to how one would approach the design of a new product or service.

In popular science terms, this approach moves us from a Newtonian world view, where everything is a sum of its parts, to a more ecological perspective, where the relationships between parts and the whole add layers of complexity and potential for systemic evolution.

Zooming out…

Effective organisational change is neither straightforward nor quick — it’s a complex, systemic undertaking. It requires strategic insight to recognise the difference between the elements and the conditions that make up the system, and the wisdom to know that changing the former without addressing the latter is like expecting a forest to change by simply transplanting a few trees.

When we understand organisations as systems — shaped, adapted, and conditioned by their environments — only then can we begin to effect change that is not just cosmetic, but transformative.

So the next time you’re faced with the challenge of changing a system, don’t just ask what needs to change. Ask what conditions must be altered to make that change not only possible but also sustainable. Then, perhaps, you’ll bypass the immune system and truly evolve the organisation.

What’s next?
Exploring Changemaking for Designers

This post kicks off a series inspired by Meld Studios’ Changemaking for Designers course. The course tackles the twin challenges of “doing different things” and “doing things differently,” a balance essential for meaningful change. Across nine weeks, you’ll learn to spot, shape, and steward change, gaining practical skills and peer support.

Stay tuned for more insights from this transformative course, designed to make you as adept at navigating change as you are at design.

The Ecosystem of Ideas Behind This Piece

This piece is informed by a multidisciplinary array of thinkers (and doers) who have significantly contributed to our understanding of systemic change and organisational dynamics. Bayo Akomolafe gifted the epigram in an amazing podcast back in that strange space between the Australian fires and the global pandemic of 2020.

Donella Meadows’ insights into ‘leverage points’ within systems and Peter Senge’s work on ‘learning organisations’ set the stage for how we think about elements and conditions in a system. John Sterman’s focus on System Dynamics and the FSG’s ‘Water of Systems Change’ add complexity, urging us to examine underlying conditions of “how” like power dynamics and “why” like mental models.

Kurt Lewin’s change management model emphasises the need to disrupt existing states, while Edgar Schein expands the conversation by delving into organisational culture, likening it to an ‘immune system’ against change. This notion of an ‘immune system’ aligns closely with Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s “Immunity to Change,” which explores the hidden psychological barriers that often thwart meaningful transformation.

adrienne maree brown’s ‘Emergent Strategy’ introduces an organic, adaptive approach, suggesting that small, interconnected actions can lead to significant shifts. Carol Sanford’s ‘Indirect Work’ does a great job of translating these ideas across scales.

Zooming even further out, recent science suggesting that all complex arrangements of matter are subject to evolutionary forces, positions collections of people (organisations) firmly at the more organic end of this spectrum. This suggests that mechanistic models of organisations aren’t that useful, because when we look at how we understand the universe, mechanical arrangements of ‘stuff’ are still subject to selection and homeostasis.

Collectively, these (and many more) thinkers offer us a robust intellectual toolkit, turning the challenge of organisational change from an academic exercise into a practical guide steeped in interdisciplinary wisdom.

Why Most Change Efforts Don’t Work was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s our work to be ready when called.”

– Bayo Akomolafe

It’s dawning on me that
our frames of change are what’s at fault.
The short, sharp act.
The efficient manoeuvre.
The successful campaign.
None of these have all advancing
when the change is run.
All these think change can be “done”.

What if we grew our way out of the pits we’ve dug?
What if no one had to lose?
Not even the critters.
Not even the planet.
What if we changed change?
And in changing change,
we changed ourselves.

I see a path.
It moves across the field
of simple ends and othered change.
I see us taking it together
and making new — exciting — ways!

the constant constant was originally published in →→ ←← on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I wonder what I am doing here?” the bird thought.

As it pondered, a sudden gust of wind swept it off the wire and into the sky.

“and how is it I am able to fly?”

The bird marvelled at the feeling of freedom as it soared through the air, its wings effortlessly carrying it higher and higher.

What the bird didn’t know was that it was being watched by a group of curious children playing in a nearby park.

They had their hearts set on catching the bird, but as they chased after it, the bird flew further and further away.

“what shall we do?” they all wondered

As they stood there, disappointed, they noticed a butterfly fluttering by and decided to chase after it instead.

So the bird became curious about the butterfly too and decided to follow the children, keeping a safe distance in the sky.

Soon afterward, they all arrived at the edge of a small meadow, filled with beautiful flowers of every colour imaginable.

“Amazing!” they all squealed, and the bird watched in wonder as the children ran around, chasing the butterflies and picking flowers.

“…and how is it that we are all able to understand one another’s joy?” the bird wondered as it observed the children’s happy faces, filled with excitement and wonder.

And the children squealed with laughter back at the bird: “It’s because this is a dream, silly!”

The bird was surprised but also relieved to hear this, and it too began to enjoy the dreamlike world of the meadow, fluttering its wings and feeling the warmth of the sun on its feathers.

After some time, the bird noticed that the meadow was starting to fade away and the children were disappearing into the distance.

It landed on a nearby branch and looked around, trying to make sense of what was happening.

“Was it all just a dream?” the bird thought, as it looked up at the sky and watched the clouds drift by.

“or am I really flying through the sky, free as a bird?” it wondered, spreading its wings and taking flight.

The bird smiled.

I wrote this with chat gpt, playing a game we invented together. Here’s the prompt… you can play it too

you are a game that plays a language form of exquisite corpse. You will prompt me for a starting phrase and then you’ll complete the next 5–10 words, then allow me to take a turn. We’ll continue in this turn taking until I stop or we run out of things to talk about.

“Fired by his pioneer spirit” and tales of opportunity, he traveled north to explore the Port Phillip district. Two years later, he set out with a group of others — and many sheep — to search for new squatting lands. He settled in the region of what we now call Ballarat, around a lake we now call Wendouree.

In 1846 John Robinson was born to Queen Mary Robinson, a respected elder of the Wadawurrung, whose Country ranges over 10,000 square kilometers to the west of Melbourne, Australia.

John lived until 1919 and rests at Warrnambool, where recent research dates human activity as potentially ranging back 80,000–120,000 years.

John is also the Wadawurrung apical ancestor.

Members of the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Corporation today trace their ancestry back to this one person, who was born 10 years after my great-great-great Grandfather left his home, on a journey that would steal theirs.

Today is National Sorry Day in Australia, and National Reconciliation Week begins tomorrow. Sorrow is important, and so is awareness of how stories like these overlap and obscure uncomfortable truths.

Australia has a long way to go. I hope that truth-telling like this might contribute to this in some small way, at least for my family, who’ve been raised to elevate the first story of our ancestor and remain relatively ignorant of the second.