I don’t care

I don’t care about my ‘brand’.
I don’t care about my ‘online reputation’.
I don’t care much about money.
I don’t care to be a guru.
I don’t care much for self promotion.
I don’t care much for shiny new toys.
I don’t care anything for badly designed websites with wonderful content.
I don’t care at all for well designed websites with useless content.
I don’t care if you were doing this since the stone age.
I don’t care if you self identify as a geek.
I don’t care if you’re trying to sell me the holy grail.

I care about the residents. I care about the customers. I care about stakeholders – the doctors and directors, the officers and the on-site wardens. I care about telling people in 16 different ways in the hope one of them suits down to the ground. I care about service delivery designed by the users for the users. I care about information available as easily in the middle of the high street or the traffic jam as from your desk or your sofa. I care about being able to say yes and being confident my boss and my bosses boss will back me to the hilt – whilst telling me in private I’ve been an idiot. I care about being trust to behave myself even when we all know I lack a filter. I care about faith and hope and loyalty. I care about preserving the beauty while making it available to everyone, about stopping unnecessary diabetes and obesity, but assisting in better ways when those things happen anyway. I care about facilitating, connecting, networking and dot joining. I care about broadcasting, hubs, discussions and responses.

I want a world where offline and online are there if you want them and can be ignored if you don’t. Where healthcare is co-productive and pro-active. Where every patient in a hospital has their own personal digital mobile screen which moves with them everywhere, which is backed up, which can be hooked to a wall behind a nurses station to record pills taken, but can just as easily be removed and taken down to surgery for someone in theatre to quickly record procedures carried out. Military grade, biologically resistant, extremely waterproof, decontaminated regularly. No more note taking, no more notes disintegrating under coffee. Just sensible, easily moveable and reactive technology implemented well to save costs and save lives.

I want information everywhere. Not just in libraries but embedded. I want it to be possible for anyone to come along and sit in the middle of anywhere of our spaces and connect if they want and be oblivious of the opportunity if they don’t want to know. I want museums which talk to me silently, both in my ear and on my screen. I want them to bring the history of objects alive by telling me stories in my ear, but also to my heart, that allow me to understand how one small object – Queen Mary’s hairbrush – might have been comfort and solace, for example, a thread tying her to her remaining dignity, removed as it was by Elizabeth.

I want context and commitment. I want accessibility and amazement. I want a digital world which constructs not destroys, which encourages sharing and collaboration, not imprisonment and hacking.

I understand everything has two sides, I understand everyone has two sides. But, for me, digital is not self serving. It enabled me, and now I want to allow everyone else whose lives might be lightened a little, to be permitted the same courtesy.

This is not about me. And this is a reminder to myself as much as a notice to anyone else. This is not about me. At the end of everything my knowledge will be useless and I have no idea what I’ll do to make a living. But if, in the process, I can suggest just one thing which makes someone elses world just a little bit more sparkly, then I’ll settle. I really will.

But don’t talk to me, please don’t talk to me, about personal brands or self promotion. This is not about me, it is about everyone else but me.


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