Hi, I'm Matt. I'm a product manager, researcher and consultant with a broad interest in complex systems, computing and communication. I'm currently based in the South West of England, in the UK.
The simplest way to reach me is email: matt@thisdomain. I use it for correspondence, not capture. Cold emails are welcome and I enjoy agenda-less intro calls. I'm responsive by default and I operate by Crocker's Rules. I'm active on Warpcast (@msms) and Discord (matt_ms), and reachable on Twitter (@Matthew_Sweet), too.
Now
Some insight into what I'm up to right now.
Consulting and contracting; various
I help with:
- Paradigm shifts: identifying, sustaining and enriching current paradigms; anticipating paradigmatic decline or irrelevance; selecting and evaluating alternatives; initiating a timely and effective transition. More context here.
- Product-led outcomes: charting the now, next and later, and navigating the terrain in-between. It's a Boydian dance ("people, ideas and technology—in that order...") flavoured with critical systems thinking.
- Case making: galvanising an at best interested and at worst hostile audience to care about something using archetypical cases and impactful useful fictions. Often within the confines of a minimally resourced, time-boxed event but also via traditional collateral and channels. More context here.
- Words: leveraging text and complementary media to provide value to an audience. This can involve everything from information architecture to copy-editing to the translation and expression of tacit knowledge to the construction of systems and processes that reliably enable these word-related things.
Working 1:1 is preferred but I'm open to 1:ORG. A typical arrangement consists of recurring video calls and ongoing asynchronous interactions via email. Engagements concerning case making and words are usually shorter, higher tempo and finite. Paradigm and product-focused engagements are undertaken with a more systemic and open-ended stance.
Research; Kinocomputing
“Kinocomputing” is an alternative computing paradigm that emphasises the primacy of motion, non-discretised representations of reality, and the dynamic generation, movement, transformation and interaction of data. kinocomputing.com and the underlying graph is a permissionless research project dedicated to its study.
Product; Subset
Multiple years of producing Mag7 have taught me that indexing, distributing and publishing the interesting things one finds on the web is complicated. It doesn't have to be this way; curation should be easy. Not as easy as social media scrolling. But not much harder, either. Subset makes it so.
Curation; The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is my weekly newsletter of thematically curated artefacts. It began in July 2020 and the 200th edition looms. The newsletter goes out every Sunday at 0700 GMT/BST and contains seven things that elicited a “Whoa!”, a “Wow!”, a “Huh?” or a “Hmmm” from me—mostly text-intensive items like books, articles, blog posts or essays; sometimes projects, graphics, ideas, excerpts, videos, songs, tools, artists, art, creators, software or hardware.
Blogging; Swell & Cut
S&C is where I blog about questions and answers. The first era spanned August 2015 to January 2019 and consisted of daily blogs about mastery, strategy and practical philosophy. The second era encompassed 2019 to late 2023 and featured an intermittent publishing cadence and a surface dormancy that concealed deeper currents. S&C is now in its third era, which involves the logging of "emergent miscellanea" over on Substack.
Governance studies; The Yak Collective
YC "is an online space for collaborative tinkering ... a space where you can work with others on gardening your indie or weekends-and-evenings life in collaboration with others who share some of your priorities / interests." I'm mostly involved with the recurring governance studies group but it's not uncommon to find me weighing in on an arbitrary thread or enviously side-eyeing other YC activity tracks.
Previously
A selection of salient past activities and projects.
Seminal Reads
Much of the goodness in my life has—and continues to—emerge from reading. Below are the highest rated books I've read in past years.
Top Rated Books of 2023
All lists are based on the "Read" section of my 2023 annual review. A mega-thread of all of 2023's reads can be found here.
Top rated non-fiction, 2023
- The Matter with Things Vol. 2, Iain McGilchrist
- Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
- Underland, Robert Macfarlane
- Ways of Being, James Bridle
- Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
- Operating Systems: Three Easy Steps, Remzi H. and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
- What Remains?, Rupert Callender
- The Art of Gig Vol. 2: Superstructures, Venkatesh Rao
- Everything Flows, Daniel J. Nicholson, John Dupre
- The Pattern on the Stone, W. Daniel Hillis
- Oral Histories of the Internet and the Web, Niels Brugger, Gerard Goggin
- Chip War,, Chris Miller
- Health Communism, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant
- Nomadland, Jessica Bruder
- Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain, Stephen Grossberg
- Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, Frans Osinga
- Behaviour and Culture in One Dimension, Dennis P. Waters
- The Nature of Technology, W. Brian Arthur
Top rated fiction, 2023
- Deadhouse Gates (Malazan II), Steven Erikson
- Gardens of the Moon (Malazan I), Steven Erikson
- Watchmen, Alan Moore
- Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons and Dragons, Patrick Rothfuss, Jim Zub, Troy Little
- Saga: Compendium One, Brian K. Vaughan / Fiona Staples
- The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy, Robin Hobb
- The Sandman: Book Two, Neil Gaiman et. al
- The Complete Maus, Art Speigelman
- The Sandman: Book One, Neil Gaiman et. al
- Fool’s Fate (The Tawny Man III), Robin Hobb
Honourable mentions, 2023
- The Self-Assembling Brain, Peter Robin Hiesinger
- Chaos Kings, Scott Patterson
- The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering, Sanjoy Mahajan
- Extrastatecraft, Keller Easterling
- Spaced Out, Mike Prada
- Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki
- Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
- Underbug, Lisa Margonelli
- Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Shinshu Roberts
- Blockchain Chicken Farm, Xiawei Wang
Top Rated Books of 2022
All lists are based on the "Read" section of my 2022 annual review.
Top rated non-fiction, 2022
- Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity, Michael C. Jackson
- Theory of the Earth, Thomas Nail
- The Matter with Things Vol. 1, Iain McGilchrist
- Seeing That Frees, Rob Burbea
- Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
- Working, Robert Caro
- The Figure of the Migrant, Thomas Nail
- Theory of the Image, Thomas Nail
- Ideas That Created the Future, Harry R. Lewis
- Product Management in Practice (2nd Ed.), Matt LeMay
- Theory of the Border, Thomas Nail
- The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd
- Theory of the Object, Thomas Nail
Top rated fiction, 2022
- The Hydrogen Sonata (Culture X), Iain M. Banks
- Surface Detail (Culture IX), Iain M. Banks
- Seven Surrenders (Terra Ignota II), Ada Palmer
- Where the Crawdads Sings, Delia Owens
- Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota I), Ada Palmer
- Matter (Culture VIII), Iain M. Banks
- Perhaps the Stars (Terra Ignota IV), Ada Palmer
- My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels 1), Elena Ferrante
- Chronicles of the Black Company (Black Company 1-4), Glen Cook
- Harbinger of the Storm (Obsidian and Blood II), Aliette de Bodard
- Servant of the Underworld (Obsidian and Blood I), Aliette de Bodard
Honourable mentions, 2022
Top Rated Books of 2021 (April to December)
Both lists are based, in part, on the "Read" section of my 2021 annual review.
Top rated non-fiction, 2021
Top rated fiction, 2021
- The God is Not Willing, Steven Erikson
- Blood and Bone (A Novel of the Malazan Empire V), Ian C. Esslemont
- Orb, Sceptre, Throne (A Novel of the Malazan Empire IV), Ian C. Esslemont
- Assail (A Novel of the Malazan Empire VI), Ian C. Esslemont
- Stonewielder (A Novel of the Malazan Empire III), Ian C. Esslemont
- Look to Windward (Culture VII), Iain M. Banks
- Matter (Culture VIII), Iain M. Banks
- The Stand, Stephen King
- Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy III), Robin Hobb
- Gerta: A Novel, Katerina Tuckova
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