Field notes
The Journal
Notes on design and technology, and the messy work of making things.
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Provenance Is Not a Business Model
Seventy-eight per cent of people say they would rather an advert were made by a person, even if AI could make it better. The same study never asks what they would pay for that. This is an essay about the distance between those two facts, written against the position most of my own field holds.
5 min read
Enforced in Code, Not in Taste
Generative systems average. Left alone they drift toward the middle of everything they were trained on, which is why so much of the current output is recognisable at a glance. The counter is not better prompting. It is a constraint that can fail — and this week mine failed twice, which is the only reason I trust it.
August 15, 2026
4 min read
Fifteen Minutes of the Open Web
Two measurements, both public, both read at the source: people click far less when a machine answers first, and most of the crawling that reaches your pages is no longer looking for readers. The strategy on offer is to publish more.
August 9, 2026
1 min read
Letting the Work Go
The hardest part of making something isn't starting it or sustaining it — it's deciding it's finished, and letting it leave your hands a little imperfect.
June 10, 2026
1 min read
The Long Middle
Beginnings are celebrated and endings are remembered, but it's the long, quiet middle — where nothing photographs well — that decides what the work becomes.
June 9, 2026
New reflections, when they land.
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