This week's best things
A new NGA.gov, art in hard times, fresh ways to frame digital, ancient oranges, guarding teams from strategy fatigue, Japanese tree moving, bot farms and info literacy, quick sketching, AI dev hurdles, London Underground Live, and robot arms.
After a week of sun here in Gothenburg, it's now raining (which will never not make me hum this Scott Walker song), anyway I hope the sun’s shining wherever you are, and that May (how is it May already!?) is treating you kindly so far. Here are a few good things to start the month...
A new NGA.gov
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has just launched a new website, and it’s a bit of a departure from the usual museum fare.
They're trying to do something different with the design and UX, which is great to see. It’s clean, good-looking, and feels easy to get around. The smoothed-out scrolling takes a bit of getting used to (not sure it adds much), but otherwise, on first look, it’s an effective, thoughtful refresh.
The role of art in difficult times
A thoughtful piece from Margaret Heffernan in the FT
"In our own troubled times, it’s common to dismiss the arts as merely decorative, trivial, distracting. But historians know better, arguing that if you want to identify when change starts, the best place to look for it is in art. So what role can artists play in times of confusion and fear?"
And on a similar note, Arts Council England CEO, Darren Henley shared an excerpt from his book, The Arts Dividend:
"That doesn't mean that all art will be equally popular in every public constituency. Taste, custom and history – elements intrinsic to the richness of our national culture – must be taken into account, and these are every bit as influential as the aesthetic traditions of an art form. The actor, playwright and director Kwame Kwei-Armah says that theatre, for example, is a ‘catalyst for debate about the big themes’ in society. And I reckon he’s right.
Artists must be able to challenge preconceptions, to think differently and freely, to imagine new possibilities, and to create great art in new ways. Imagination is vital to creativity: if we can draw on our experiences to call up an image of the world in our consciousness, we can create an environment ripe for experimentation. For me, the words of the poet Lemn Sissay capture this beautifully:
‘We turn to art and creativity because it is the greatest and truest expression of humanity available to all. And all things are possible in the eye of the creative mind. To be more is to imagine more.’"
A new way of talking about 'digital'
Earlier this week I shared a new way I’ve been thinking about digital, not as one big, messy, confusing thing, but as a landscape.
It maps digital activity across two axes and clusters it into three modes: Enable, Engage, and Express.
It’s not a maturity model, it's a tool to help clarify intent and avoid talking past each other. It's still a work in progress, but it's already proving useful in conversations I'm having with people.
Curious? Confused? Have a look and let me know what you think.
I've also put together some information on how I work with organisations using this model, if that sounds interesting then drop me a line.
Ash Mann
Ancient oranges
When I shared the framework (above) I had a nice comment from Edward Edgcumbe which linked to this post from Matt Webber, which is about ternary plots and is maybe worth a read if you like that sort of thing (I do).
But more interestingly is that the post from Matt Webber links to this (I think) fascinating ternary plot which visualises 'hybridisation of citrus cultivars' and shows that all 'modern' citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, clementines, etc) are some combination of pomelo, true mandarin, and citron.
- oranges: 50% true mandarin, 50% pomelo, zero citron.
- lemons: 30% true mandarin, 20% pomelo, 50% citron.
- grapefruit: kinda like oranges but with more pomelo.
This is interesting and you can't convince me otherwise.
SLV Lab
I'm always going on about experimentation and curiosity so it was very cool to see this new initiative launch this week at State Library Victoria in Australia.
"SLV LAB is State Library Victoria's prototyping and innovation lab. We experiment with technology to open access to collections, data and spaces."
Protect Your Team from Strategy Fatigue
A really useful post in Harvard Business Review.
"Strategy fatigue, where employees struggle to understand the company’s purpose and objectives, sets in when you chase too many initiatives at once or constantly shift direction without a clear reason. [...]
Set up screening criteria. Define what aligns with your strategic direction—and stick to it. Be ready to say no or defer ideas that don’t clear the bar. This clarity will help you stay focused on what truly matters.
Use data-based scoring frameworks. Rank ideas by their business value and required effort. Tools like weighted scoring or a value vs. effort matrix help ground decisions in facts, not knee-jerk enthusiasm.
Employ proof-of-concept experiments. Instead of chasing every shiny new idea, run small tests to gauge feasibility before committing major resources. This approach reduces risk while encouraging innovation through controlled experimentation.
Maintain a single, visible pipeline. Track all non-routine initiatives in one place. This visibility helps you spot overlap, avoid overcommitment, and prioritize effectively. Use regular reviews—and a rule like “one in, one out”—to keep the workload manageable."
Tree Transplanting, the Old Way and the New Way
An interesting read about the Japanese practice of tree transplanting, "when it comes time for new construction, enlightened organizations may choose to move a tree rather than cut it down. Here we see shots of a Camphor tree in Minato-ku, Tokyo, being relocated a distance of ten meters. [...] This method can reportedly take more than a year, with the bundled roots being given time to grow within their temporary enclosure for stability's sake."
The process looks absolutely fascinating, and extremely involved (check out the photos and video in the article) with both the 'old' and 'new' ways.
"As an interesting side note, the Japanese term for carefully digging out the roots, nemawashi, has become shorthand in the Japanese business world. The phrase roughly translates to "laying the groundwork" in English; within the Japanese context, it means speaking to all of the stakeholders involved to prepare them for an upcoming change, shift or new operation. The people in this case are the roots, and the belief is that great care must be taken with them in order for the organization to thrive in its new disposition."
Rain Noe
Bot farms invade social media to hijack popular sentiment
A suuuuuper depressing but important read in Fast Company about the impact of bot farms in driving which issues get traction.
"Bot farm amplification is being used to make ideas on social media seem more popular than they really are. A bot farm consists of hundreds and thousands of smartphones controlled by one computer. In data-center-like facilities, racks of phones use fake social media accounts and mobile apps to share and engage. The bot farm broadcasts coordinated likes, comments, and shares to make it seem as if a lot of people are excited or upset about something like a volatile stock, a global travesty, or celebrity gossip—even though they’re not. [...]
“People under the age of 30 don’t go to Google anymore,” says Jacki Alexander, “They go to TikTok and Instagram and search for the question they want to answer. It requires zero critical thinking skills but somehow feels more authentic. You feel like you’re making your own decisions by deciding which videos to watch, but you’re actually being fed propaganda that’s been created to skew your point of view.”
It’s not an easy problem to solve. And social media companies appear to be buckling to inauthenticity. After Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), the company fired much of its anti-misinformation team and reduced the transparency of platform manipulation. Meta is phasing out third-party fact-checking. And YouTube rolled back features meant to combat misinformation."
The point about 'people under the age of 30 don't go to Google anymore' was also highlighted in an article I read in Politico "How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Generation".
"“There is this myth of the digital native, that because some people have grown up with digital devices, they are well equipped to make sense of the information that those devices provide,” says Joel Breakstone, who led the 2021 study. “The results were sobering.”
It’s a startling reality about Gen Z, backed up by multiple studies and what we can all see for ourselves: The most online generation is also the worst at discerning fact from fiction on the internet.
That becomes an issue when the internet — and specifically, social media — has become the main source of news for the younger generation. About three in five Gen Zers, from between the ages of 13 and 26, say they get their news from social media at least once a week. TikTok is a particularly popular platform: 45 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said they were regular news consumers on the app."
I'm sure I've seen work that counters this narrative (i.e. research that highlights many young people are actually fairly information literate), but I couldn't easily find it. Please do share anything you've come across - help me feel less despairing!
Quick, Draw!
This is probably doing something nefarious, but it was fun to play with.
Can a neural network recognise quick doodles you do? My drawing of a pair of headphones was a particular triumph.
AI-generated code could be a disaster for the software supply chain. Here’s why.
More on AI, this time from Ars Technica, highlighting a growing risk: AI-generated code is increasingly riddled with made-up references to third-party libraries.
These “hallucinated” dependencies aren’t just harmless errors, they could open the door to serious supply-chain attacks.
"The study, which used 16 of the most widely used large language models to generate 576,000 code samples, found that 440,000 of the package dependencies they contained were “hallucinated,” meaning they were non-existent. [...] many package hallucinations aren’t random one-off errors. Rather, specific names of non-existent packages are repeated over and over. Attackers could seize on the pattern by identifying nonexistent packages that are repeatedly hallucinated. The attackers would then publish malware using those names and wait for them to be accessed by large numbers of developers."
Given how complex and fragmented modern codebases are, this could have real consequences. Whilst robust QA processes should help catch these issues, it's still worth a chat with your tech partners, AI tools are probably already in the mix in how the produce, maintain, and monitor their codebases.
Dan Goodin
London Underground Live
I like maps, I like APIs, I like realtime visualisations, so I really like this site that Ben James has built which uses the TFL API to show you the whole London Underground system working in realtime on a nice 3d map.
Ben James
OK Go and robot arms
An enjoyable and benevolent use of technology to end with.
Kings of the music video, OK Go, have shared this behind-the-scenes look at music video for their song "Love".
It's inventive and charming as always.
Last week's edition
For some reason last week's newsletter ended up in a lot of junk folders, I had a chat with the folks at Ghost (the platform I use for the newsletter) and they said they'd had some issues with the service they use to send the emails.
Anyway, hopefully that's all resolved now, but if you missed last week's edition you can check it out here. Come for the breakdown of how the V&A team designed their mused platform for young people and advice on running stakeholder interviews, stay for the children in northern Norway harvesting cod tongues for pocket money...
Ash Mann
This week's consumption
I finished The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver which was excellent (although not as good as Demon Copperhead).
I started and finished Percival Everett's The Trees which is really good. Almost as good as James, but in a very different, more acerbic way.
Season five of Race Across The World is on the BBC, if you ever wanted evidence of the power of formats then I think that this, and Taskmaster, are two bullet-proof examples.
I started watching season 2 of Andor which continues to the best job of all the millions of Star Wars spinoff things by feeling like its own thing that's actually worth your time and doesn't require knowing absolutely everything about the Star Wars 'universe'.
A while ago I shared The South Atlantic by Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the most beautiful pop songs I've heard for a long time. Swedish pianist, Peter Sandberg, has done a remix, and it is really good - delicate and lovely (and my pal Graham did the artwork).
See you next week
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Please enjoy this impressive but fairly unusable and processor-hungry site from Active Theory.
To finish, a quick reminder that I'm a consultant who helps cultural organisations do better digital work - if it sounds like I could be useful, then let's chat.