Weeknote #30: Restoration
What happened this week?
A day of leave on Monday was spent on a furniture hunt with the girl. We were the first people in Ikea which was fun (for a while). We left with some spoons, a pack of storage tubs and a feeling of nothing being quite right but still missing out on something.
On Tuesday, I had an interesting catch up with Kelly Davies, Head of Collection IT at the Rijksmuseum. It was good to share our "test and learn" approach to the adoption of small-scale AI-workflows as they look to build similar set ups.
I also had a new photo taken for use on the Library website. Super awks, but I'm sure it will be fine. My head is my head is my head.
On Wednesday, our CRM project had a big kick off meeting bringing together multiple teams with our development partner. It was great to hear people recognise how things could be better and allow systems to enable rather than hinder staff. We're trying to identify potential "gotchas" and lean into the big, complicated questions early on.
A bit of an admin whirlwind on Thursday preparing new job roles for a UKRI-funded initiative - including a part-time Project Manager. A group briefing surfaced some concerns around the project not aligning with Library values and overall reputational risk. As ever, we proceed with care, pragmatism and openness.
A big change of scene on Friday visiting the WWF Restoration Forth project with the Heritage Fund on the East Lothian coast. After a biodiversity survey and monitoring oyster levels at low tide, we visited the Forth Marine Hatchery. There's fascinating work going on to scale up oyster restoration from the thousands into the millions (plus, some super cute baby lobsters)🦪🦞
And then... it was off to the Kings Theatre for the official re-opening event (thanks for the plus one, Simon). The restored building looked great and the team have worked hard to lean into memories of the Kings from the community. The canapés were also good.
Interesting things
Lots of damning AI stories this week: Multiple examples of extractive practices and applications with clear detrimental effects to wider society [As a Luddite handbill once put it, we should oppose "machines hurtful to the commonality"]:
- Anthropic have been destroying rare books to distill their contents. Urgh. Gary Marcus sets out how the company is rapidly losing its shine and there are no heroes in commercial AI.
- AI hallucinates information to refuse asylum claims.
- A (failed) plan to deploy a Humanoid teacher bot in a New York School.
- Google's Nano Banana image generator for Google Earth is launched without strict guardrails against inevitable misuse.
- LinkedIn has added a "Seems like AI slop" button for users to report posts - a phrase for the ages.
- In more positive news, Oonagh Murphy at Arts Council England has launched the Responsible AI Cultural Leaders Academy with applications opening in September (for England-based cultural leaders).
Watching, listening, reading, doing
📖 I've started Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout.
📺 I'm finally getting round to watching Wolf Hall (iPlayer). Amazing pacing, script and performances, especially from Mark Rylance who can communicate so much with the lift of a single eyebrow ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎞️ The Fablemans ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎞️ Thinking more about the Odyssey, this LRB article is pretty scathing but also hard to disagree with:
Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.
🏃 I'm trying to plank for one minute a day, but planking is hard. I am bad at planking.
