Tagged “ethics”

Basecamp—makers of project management, team communication and email software—have taken a controversial new stance against (amongst other things) political discussion at work, “paternalistic benefits” and 360 performance reviews.

These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places. It's not healthy, it hasn't served us well.

I currently buy books from a mix of physical and online stores including Waterstones, Hive, Blackwells and most recently, The Outwith Agency – my new local shop.

A recent issue of the dConstruct newsletter about choosing more ethical online services really chimed with me at a time when I’ve been reflecting on my online habits.

An interesting BBC podcast on the history and true nature of the cloud.

We connect to the cloud, think of it as place-less, a digital “elsewhere” for storing and retrieving our data, content and memories. But far from being immaterial, the cloud is a vast, physical network made up of concrete, silicon and steel, of earthbound server farms, subterranean data centres and cables beneath the sea. It is not a publicly owned space or digital 'commons'. It is a multi-billion dollar, private infrastructure dominated by some of the world’s most powerful companies—principally Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The cloud exists within the same geography that we do: a patchwork of national and legal jurisdictions, which determine—most of the time—what it can and cannot do.