Blog
A Quarter Century of Scrutiny
For nearly a quarter century, this blog has served as a thinking space exploring the intersection of technology, business, ethics, and the human experience. The underlying thread is a persistent questioning of why and how we build, govern, and live together.
The Relentless March
While rooted in sharp observations about the relentless march of innovation (from Apple's product strategies to Amazon's market dominance to the promises and perils of artificial intelligence), the blog tackles the big themes with uncompromising scrutiny: the erosion of democratic norms, the concentration of corporate power, the consequences of algorithmic governance, and the disconnect between innovation and accountability.
The Full Spectrum
But it's not all serious. There's a recurring delight in the absurd (Apple's 'all day battery' claims get their due), genuine enthusiasm for well-told stories, an appreciation for music and cultural moments, and the occasional travel tale that reminds us the world exists beyond our screens.
The Voice
Whether dissecting the Mueller investigation, examining publishing's subscription models, celebrating meaningful purpose in business, or simply pointing readers toward an article that deserves attention, the voice throughout is one of an engaged citizen-thinker: curious, sceptical of power, grounded in principles, and convinced that clarity of purpose and ethical principles should be the essence of every relationship, and every institution.
Newsletter
The Core Insight
Human By Design explores a deceptively simple idea: that in an age of relentless velocity and algorithmic chaos, your competitive advantage is no longer speed, scale, or access to tools. It's coherence (the degree to which every decision, every interaction, every output flows from the same underlying model of reality).
The Architecture of Thinking
The newsletter traces a journey through the architecture of thinking itself. Starting with People First (the recognition that human meaning precedes and outlasts any operational structure), it evolved into Structured Thought: the discipline of making your thinking explicit enough that others can access it, your systems can operate from it, and your AI tools don't amplify your fragmentation at scale.
What It's Actually About
What began as questions about work and purpose has become something sharper: an examination of how organisations think. How they decide. How they maintain coherence as they grow. The threads are consistent: the erosion of meaning under the pressure to scale, the concentration of decision-making power, the gap between what we say and what we do, and the stubborn human need for clarity of purpose.
The Practical Move
But it's also practical. There's no purity here (no insistence that we abandon technology or business ambition). Instead, the work is about integration: how to build systems of engagement rather than systems of record. How to create the conditions where people want to participate rather than merely comply. How to use structure not as constraint, but as liberation.
The Observation
The recurring observation is this: coherence compounds; incoherence fragments. A small team with explicit mental models, documented constraints, and shared reasoning outpaces larger organisations buried in unspoken disagreements and departmental silos. Single operators thinking with clarity beat corporations thinking in contradiction.
The Voice
The voice throughout is one of a practitioner grappling with a real problem: How do you scale without losing your mind? How do you bring structure to ambiguity without killing the very human qualities that make work meaningful?
Documents
A Personal Operating System
Your online document repository is a complete personal operating system: organised around who you are, what you think, and what you bring. At its core: your About, contact information, values statement, and the philosophical framework that articulates your distinctive perspective on people, technology, and business.
The Intellectual Journey
The repository documents your intellectual journey: your Johnisms capturing your way of thinking, your feeds and sources reflecting what shapes your perspective, your partnerships with Tony and the Business Engagement Systems practice.
Context and Reflection
Deeper collections provide context: reference materials, one-liners, profiles of influential thinkers. Personal reflections explore the pragmatics and principles that guide you: what you bring to organisations, the core challenges you address, ideas meant for posterity, your thinking as it stands now in 2026.
What It Actually Is
The entire system is searchable, current, and deliberately organised so themes emerge: identity, values, expertise, relationships, the ideas that matter. This is your complete personal constitution (not a resume, but a working record of who you are and how you think).
Wiki
The Operating System
The Wiki is the operating system beneath everything else. While the blog explores ideas and the newsletter argues for a shift in thinking, the Wiki is where that thinking gets built into infrastructure: where mental models become legible, atomic concepts link together, and the invisible scaffolding of Structured Thought becomes visible and reusable.
The Fundamental Insight
Ideas don't scale until they're explicit.
Architecture: Atoms
At the foundation sit Atoms: 42 core concepts (Value, Language, Work, Technology, Data, Identity, and others) stripped down to their essence. These aren't definitions; they're load-bearing walls. Each one connects to larger structures.
Architecture: Models
Built from those atoms are Models: frameworks drawn from thinkers like Wardley, Gladwell, Moore, and Hock. Cynefin, Chasm, Systems of Engagement, the Business Equation, Wardley Maps. These models answer specific questions about complexity, scaling, and strategic choice. But they're not isolated: they're linked. A problem in one framework often reveals leverage in another.
Architecture: Layers
The Wiki moves upward through layers: Forming the Fabric (how atoms organise into coherence, the 8 Pillars, fractals, the recursive patterns that repeat at every scale), and then into The Next Dimensions (Platonic solids and tesseracts: the geometric and multi-dimensional thinking required to hold complexity).
The Connective Tissue
The three Core Concepts (Structured Thought, People First, and the Business Equation) serve as the connective tissue. They explain not just what the other models are, but why they matter and how they belong together.
What It Actually Is
This isn't a reference library. It's a thinking machine. A place where ideas get tested for clarity, connected to other ideas, and held to the standard that if you can't make something legible (linkable, reusable, teachable), it's not ready. The Wiki is proof of the discipline. It's Structured Thought looking at itself.