Prosaic Times: thinking, not thought leadership
Prosaic Times is a weekly newsletter exploring the wonder and frustration of enterprise technology through the lens of history, economics, political science, psychology, epistemology and sardonic humor.
It includes some of the thinking from my internal newsletter to McKinsey’s technology practice that’s appropriate to share externally.
Why do I say we live in “Prosaic Times?”
It’s Ironic: We don’t live in prosaic times — we may be at a genuine inflection point in human knowledge and productivity
It’s not ironic: We risk flattening the texture of work, sanding off the friction that makes craft, strategy, and judgment meaningful
It’s practical: Big, scaled technology only works when the unglamorous operational basics — change control, release management, threat modeling — actually work
Subscribe if you’re the kind of person who:
Cares about enterprise technology and believes it will shape the world even more over the next decade than it did in the last one
Is a CIO, CTO, CISO, or senior technologist who uses history, economics, psychology, political science, and epistemology to move peers and shape teams
Is a front-line technologist who wants to understand how senior leaders think — not just what they do
Is a business leader trying to understand how enterprise technology actually works, so you can be a better partner and get more out of tech
Builds technology products and wants to understand how they fit into the messy, dynamic reality of enterprise IT
Don’t subscribe if you’re looking for:
Simplistic checklists for complex topics (“5 ways to manage GenAI risk”)
The latest vibes — why GenAI (or client–server, middleware, OOP, RPA, cloud, mobile, digital, AR/VR) will “change everything”
“What to do” without caring why — and treating doing and knowing as opposites
Brief content that avoids context, complexity, nuance, or contingency
If that resonates, you’ll fit right in. Join the discussion and subscribe.
