Reflections 14th June

Agency, and being seen to be useful

Last week I wrote that we are all beginners now. The thought has stayed with me, and changed shape.

The relationship we have with our work is starting to feel like the relationship horses had with the plough when the tractor arrived. We are putting AI at the centre of the argument about work, much as people put the tractor at the centre of theirs a hundred years ago. I think it is the same mistake. A century ago the thing at the centre was the farm. The thing at the centre now is the way we make and create what we need. What did not change then, and I doubt will change now, is that human life still has to be fed, and housed, and somehow held together. What changed was how we organise to do it.

I have begun to wonder whether our attention is in the wrong place. We watch individuals, when we might do better to watch organisations, because if the analogy holds, organisations are the horses. They are what the new machine acts upon most powerfully.

And as organisations change, we will have l…