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Must read stuff

Must read stuff

Honest thoughts on technology, work, and the things we live with.

An English editorial column from FX Group Sweden about the good, the bad, and the unfinished parts of everyday technology.

Latest essay · No. 04

The folding rule on the bench beside the laser

A carpenter's folding rule and a boxed laser measure share a bench. The rule shows its bend, its worn hinge, the pencil mark from last week. The laser shows a number. What the worker loses is not speed but the ability to judge the tool before acting, and that gap now runs through the dashboards we build for small businesses.

EssayOct 27, 20266 min read
No. 03Essay

The pen behind the warehouse manager's ear

Anders runs a warehouse with a scanner in one hand and a pen behind his ear. I watched him cross off line 47, write "A3" in the margin, then tap the screen to log the pick. The scanner records every item. The pen records the room. The gap between them is where the work actually happens, and it is not on any dashboard.

Oct 26, 20267 min read
No. 02Essay

The locksmith's drawer and the software we can't open

A locksmith's wall of labeled drawers taught me the difference between a tool that fails and a tool that cannot be recovered. We have made our systems more reliable and less repairable, and the person at the front desk is paying for it. The drawer is not nostalgia. It is a record of who can open the thing when it breaks, and that record is disappearing from the room.

Oct 24, 20267 min read
No. 01Essay

The paper grid beside the booking system

Dashboards promise an end to reconciling. In most small businesses, the work just moves to the person who no longer trusts the screen. Convenient software hides the state of the work, so the person closest to it builds a paper ledger to keep a version she can correct. The shadow ledger is not resistance to technology; it is a quiet repair, and a cost the dashboard never shows.

Oct 24, 20267 min read
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