I’m David Knott. I’ve been working in enterprise technology for over forty years and I’m still learning. This blog is based on mistakes, failures, lessons and some things I find interesting:
Uncertainty: the final frontier
When our schedules and streaming services are full of Star Trek content (at the last count, thirteen series and fourteen films), it seems hard to remember that the series was once a lonely, experimental long shot: the first regular science fiction TV series with recurring characters and themes, squarely aimed at adults.
Prompted by watching the (excellent) series Strange New Worlds, I tracked down a print copy of the book The Making of Star Trek, published in 1968, between the second and third season of the original series, when it was on the brink of cancellation. If you can put aside some of the 1960s-era attitudes (despite the generally progressive tone of Star Trek, there are some paragraphs that wouldn’t make it into a 2026 edition), it’s a fascinating overview of television production at the time, and of the challenges of getting studios and networks to try something new (and expensive).
How augmented is your reality?
In the Battlestar Galactica reboot series, the Cylon character Brother Cavil laments that, when he saw a supernova, ‘you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air . . .’ He goes on to demand, ‘I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter!’ In the story, Cavil is a synthetic being but, rather than the gleaming robot form of the Cylons from the original film and TV series, he inhabits an organic human body, subject to humanity’s frailties and constraints.
Finding wisdom in unexpected places
In strange and uncertain times, it helps to find wisdom, whatever the source.
I don’t mind admitting that, even though I am privileged to be healthy, housed and in work, I find it challenging to work in a world where we can’t meet each other in person, where I sit in the same room every day, and those days blur into a seamless stream.
In theory, as I no longer have to take the time to travel home on a train (or even a plane), I should end each day with the extra energy to put that lockdown time to productive use. In practice, I find that, most evenings, I don’t have the energy to do much more than watch TV. I suspect that I am not alone.