In his newsletter Dave points to Duncan Brown talking about bookings as an example of what he calls “design by cliché”. It’s an interesting idea, but in the case of bookings, I don’t think that being a ‘cliché’ is the problem.
It’s more that the reason all these things are called bookings is that once upon a time, the record of the thing it’s describing went into a book, an actual book – it might have been called a ledger or a diary or something, but it’s a description of a technology being used rather than the thing itself. And that’s why trying to treat all bookings as if they were the same is as meaningless now as saying “I need to make a computering”. If anyone needs an old man shouting at clouds, I’m available.
There’s a lot of cruft in that link to Dave’s newsletter above, which may or may not be tracking you or me in some way, but I didn’t have the patience to work out which bits I could cut out.
My dear departed pal from New Orleans, Ray Nichols, did an interesting thing when he retired. He would describe his voluntary work as ‘interning’. So basically he’d appoint himself as intern with an organisation or collective (it didn’t matter what) as a kind of joke, but also pointing to the fact that he wanted to keep on learning and stay slightly humble. I’m not retiring, but I’m attracted to being a self-appointed intern in a number of contexts, making tea, helping out, observing and learning, but also sharing stuff that I know but that you wouldn’t necessarily fully employ me for. As Ray would have undoubtedly remarked, “Just Sayin’!”
I also think of LLM chatbots as fast, eager-to-please interns that you can mercilessly exploit without the usual consequences, but who might also make catastrophic errors if you give them too much agency.
Poor old interns.
Perfect Path 