2026-11-08 -  Amongst the noise and crowds in Nagoya and Tokyo I found courteous transit, commercial design with an abundance of character, and behind-the-scenes exhibitions from one of my favourite game developers.

2026-11-01 -  Japan’s in-person service is warm and its software is a maze. From an onsen hotel in Mie prefecture to a ¥9,000 sushi dinner for four, my first post from this trip looks at care, clutter, and life off the beaten track.

2026-10-25 -  Neither Screen Time nor folders could stop me reaching for social apps. Now I avoid them entirely with a custom menu that combines the functionality of an iPhone with the user interface of a Nokia 3310.

2026-10-11 -  Building slides, proofing text, generating images... AI can handle much of our day-to-day busywork. Your role as a human is to do the thinking required to keep it on track and appropriately refine its output.

2026-09-20 -  We can't stop bad things from happening to us, but we can change how we react. This month: Hospital visits, LLMs that struggle to identify a car, London's new 24/7 grindset café, and a new Weezer album.

2026-09-13 -  AI has entered the age of the contradiction. Just as the major labs dropped their doomer takes to focus on human-agent coexistence, a string of incidents caused by out-of-control models have damaged trust.

2026-09-06 -  Sony already doubled down on its unpopular decision to end the production of PlayStation game discs – now it's locking in the concept of digital games as temporary licences, with no real ownership for players.

2026-08-15 -  From Thomas Tuchel's dissatisfaction with a winning England performance to a man running in the 35-degree Austin sun – this month's Field Notes is about doing things properly, even in difficult conditions.

2026-08-09 -  Rising prices, diminishing generational leaps, and the slow death of physical media have stripped games consoles of their advantages. The days of PlayStation and Xbox as we know them may be numbered.

2026-07-26 -  Software bloat went unchecked for decades because memory was cheap. Now it isn't, and consumers can't afford those same specs. Which way the industry turns next depends on values, not just technology.