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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦

@gordonr.ca
641 followers 330 following 213 posts

VP & Partner, OXD: Vancouver-based digital services firm. I work with government to afford better citizen outcomes. 🇨🇦 Spem Successus Alit | success nourishes hope.

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Reposted by Gordon Ross 🇨🇦
Daniel Munro @dkmunro.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Petition to replace “wrote” with “prompted” in any discussion about the use of AI in generating papers. www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
washingtonpost.com
Using AI, a professor wrote 200 papers this year. Researchers are alarmed.
An online platform removed 257 papers written or co-written by the University of Chicago’s Nicholas Polson after other academics raised questions.
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 23/09/2026
Love your local bike mechanic
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 23/09/2026
Well that was fast…
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snowded.bsky.social @snowded.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I'm starting to pull a set of posts that define anthro-complexity & position it against other approaches. This one on Practice Theory also links to the whole series, which I will soon consolidate into a booklet: the provisional section two of 'The Book'. thecynefin.co/practice-the...
thecynefin.co
Practice Theory and Anthro-complexity: - The Cynefin Co
Leopards break into the temple and drink dry the sacrificial vessels; this happens again and again; in the end it can be predicted, and it becomes part of
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 18/09/2026
Making the most of soccer practice and a glorious September.
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Abe Newman @abenewman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
1/As @pkrugman.bsky.social says, Weaponized Interdependence is now everywhere. But where did it come from? US-China is all over the news, but its origins go back 25 years. 9/11 transformed the world and we are still grappling with its repercussions. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/weaponized...
paulkrugman.substack.com
Weaponized Interdependence
Who has the power in a trading world?
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 11/09/2026
Just wrote 5800 words about sovereignty, starting with a blank page and a lot of thoughts this morning. Feeling oddly satisfied that I can still do something like that. Unclear as to its quality, but feels good to get that out of my head.
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Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Thanks, but actually my favorite line didn't make it to the piece. Does Odysseus feel guilty about the Trojan war? Lots of discourse on this question even though he doesn't exist! Is he conscious? AI agents are fictive characters abstracted from text - like Odysseus.
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Along the Coastal Shores of the Salish Seas Traditional Native Territories Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun ~ Hul’q’umi’num Coast Salish, Syilx 2023
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 30/06/2026
As @swardley.bsky.social once said, "GPTs / LLMs are a non kinetic form of warfare designed to embed its makers values into the decision making processes of a wider community." www.economist.com/briefing/202...
economist.com
AI models’ values are very different from most people’s
They are more secular and more liberal—unless they’re made in China
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 30/06/2026
Cathal Kelly: Now is the moment of real danger – before the big game, with many days of airtime left to fill. Clusters of politicians will be launching themselves from a great distance at the bandwagon." Doug McCallum: "Hold my beer" www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/socce...
theglobeandmail.com
Politicians pounce at the opportunity to use the World Cup to be seen and heard
We don’t need our politicians to be cheerleaders to the latest sports moment
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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I'm in the grip of about 10000 massive deadlines, so I've obviously spent this morning writing a newsletter about a topic that is completely and utterly tangential buttondown.com/justenoughin...
buttondown.com
The Sports Car Theory of LLM Adoption
If LLMs make decision makers feel stupid, maybe they'll stop using them?
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OXD @oxd.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
OXD and sister company ThoughtFarmer turned 30, and we threw a party to celebrate! Along with great food, rooftop vibes, and epic karaoke, @darrengibbons.bsky.social and @gordonr shared 9 lessons they‘d tell their 1996 selves. Read the lessons and see photos from the night: oxd.com/blog/2026/06...
Photo of Gordon Ross and Darren Gibbons from OXD and ThoughtFarmer (formerly OpenRoad) celebrating 30 years. They have their glasses raised to cheers to the next 30 years.
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Ben Steiner @bensteiner00.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
NEW: Alphonso Davies knows BC Place — and 29 days short of the decade mark of his 2016 Whitecaps debut, he could make that that stadium buzz again. How might the #CanMNT use the biggest star? ✍️On his journey and today for SI www.si.com/soccer/canad...
si.com
Canada Must Still Decide How to Use Alphonso Davies in First Appearance for 15 Months
Davies made his MLS debut at BC Place, where Canada will play Qatar on Thursday.
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 18/06/2026
Seen a lot of soccer matches at BC Place over the years. Today feels different. Not long now… Allez les rouges! 🇨🇦⚽️ #CanMNT
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 16/06/2026
30 years of OpenRoad + @oxd.bsky.social + ThoughtFarmer. Had the privilege to reflect and celebrate the milestone with staff, clients, and friends recently. Still trying to sense-make three decades of it all. Captured a few things for our celebration speech, summary here: oxd.com/blog/2026/06...
oxd.com
Nine things we learned in thirty years | oxd.com
OXD and ThoughtFarmer (formerly OpenRoad) turned 30 this year. Read what we’d tell our 1996 selves and check out photos from our celebration.
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Dan HIll @cityofsound.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
“The great achievement of modern capitalism was to move activity from the household into the market—converting domestic production into paid specialisation…AI-enabled self-service is quietly reversing that centuries-long trend” (Pre-industrial household economy?) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
‘Can a machine do this job?’ is the wrong question
By shifting work to the consumer, AI will usher in a self-service economy
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 12/06/2026
Ontology, inevitability, disruption, safety, and regulatory: the 5 decoys of the AI Project. Using this to analyze Canada's AI Strategy this last week, you can see the decoys floating out there in the AI Project duck pond... 🦆 Also, gotta love some Castells Network Power theory (long time fan).
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Canadian History Ehx @cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
On this day in 1996, Sloan released their third studio album One Chord To Another. The album was certified gold in Canada and acclaimed by critics. It won the Juno Award for Best Alternative Album of the Year. Today, it is considered one of the greatest Canadian albums ever made.
Blue album cover for Sloan’s One Chord to Another, featuring a high-contrast black-and-blue photo of two band members leaning toward the camera while holding guitars. The title one chord to another and the band name SLOAN appear in small light text in the upper right.
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The Tyee @thetyee.ca · 12/06/2026
“We wanted to give a pathway to Canadian players, especially in B.C., to make it to the national team and maybe one day play in a World Cup,” Chris Corrigan told The Tyee. “We had no idea it would be this fast.” ⚽️ @martinbauman.com reports. thetyee.ca/News/2026/06...
thetyee.ca
The Tiny Fan-Owned BC Team Behind Canada’s World Cup Talent | The Tyee
How a Burnaby club helped launch a new generation of soccer stars.
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David Eaves @eaves.ca · 02/06/2026
New report I co-authored just dropped: three US firms control 85% of cloud computing in Canada. Your country probably faces a similar number. Sharing it widely — the problem, and the way out, matter well beyond Canada. 🧵
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 02/06/2026
Blog from @snowded.bsky.social on what theory of change models afford [in the Jenny Davis sense of request / demand / allow / encourage / discourage / refuse and for whom in what circumstances]. What do our other representations foreclose in exchange for convenience? thecynefin.co/toc-1-3-fore...
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
The technologies are new. The questions--about power, meaning, knowledge, work, who gets counted, and who is at the table--are not. Social science has been asking them all along. The essay is an argument for showing up fully to a reckoning we're already in. www.amacad.org/publication/...
amacad.org
Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object & Tool
Uses of advanced artificial intelligence are changing how societies organize labor, govern, produce knowledge, and make meaning. In light of these developments, this essay argues that AI models, tools...
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The Canadian Shield Institute @canadianshieldinstitute.ca · 12/05/2026
In @betakit.com, Shield managing director @vassb.bsky.social talks to Josh Scott about our Foundations of Digital Sovereignty project, and why governance is the most important way to strengthen Canada's digital sovereignty. Read the Q&A here: betakit.com/qa-vass-bedn...
betakit.com
Q&A: Vass Bednar on why Canada is at risk of remaining a digital 51st state | BetaKit
The Canadian Shield Institute leader talks digital sovereignty ahead of an upcoming CUSMA review.
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-a... Now up at @knightcolumbia.org - Cosma Shalizi and myself on "AI as Social Technology." It says that AI models are really a technology of social mediation that allow humans to connect with thoughts of other humans. Short-ish thread with major points follows.
knightcolumbia.org
AI as Social Technology
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 08/05/2026
🎉 To mark the 30th anniversary of the #InternetArchive on May 10, we’re opening the yearbook to revisit the Class of 1996; the sites & organizations that helped shape the early web. Join us in the coming days as we celebrate THE CLASS OF '96 🎓 More 👉 blog.archive.org/2026/05/07/c... #Classof96
Yearbook-style collage showing “1996” and “2026” around the Internet Archive headquarters building, playfully decorated with a party hat, noisemaker, and doodles, suggesting the passage of time and ongoing civic institutions. Yearbook-style “Class of ’96” page featuring a grid of early web brands and sites, including Center for Democracy and Technology, CNET, Ask Jeeves, Alexa Internet, eBay, BackRub (Google), The Onion, Spice Girls website, ICQ, HotMail, Internet Archive, Atlanta 1996 Olympics, Quake, and Salon Magazine.
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 26/04/2026
Trees are noble things to be compared to. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
theglobeandmail.com
Opinion: Midlife isn’t a crisis, it’s a compression
Like the narrow rings of a tree during lean years, this dense period of life is more about perseverance than expansion
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 22/04/2026
Excited for half a second when I saw this. Then realized it wasn't about Sloan. And that's too bad. May your Wednesday morning be filled with the other Chris: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIRn...
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 18/04/2026
Still floating though space-time after experiencing the End of Greatness at the Cultch last night. Lovely theatre, so many ideas. And well done @debcha.bsky.social for being the “nerd on call” and hosting a special talk-back discussion. “We appreciate all of you!” colinthomas.ca/the-end-of-g...
colinthomas.ca
THE END OF GREATNESS: TRANSCENDENT | Fresh Sheet Reviews
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 17/04/2026
Cory Doctorow with a banger of an opening keynote at DemocracyXChange conference - appreciate the livestream for those of us on the other side of 🇨🇦
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 16/04/2026
Watching with the UCL IIPP Notify case webinar with @eaves.ca and friends with my 🍿 this morning... "How to finance it?" Can't wait for them to dig in.
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
I'll Wait For You David Wilson 2025
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Howe Sound, British Columbia Walter J. Phillips 1935
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 04/04/2026
Some lovely turns of phrase and concepts regarding risk, institutional memory, accountability, and bureaucracy in this piece from the weekend Globe. Mnemonic Capital and epistemic negligence had me thinking of @dsquareddigest.bsky.social Gift link: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/3be31b0...
theglobeandmail.com
We have destroyed our capacity to convert historical experience into judgment
The connection between institutional memory and civilizational decline is not metaphorical – the library of Alexandria has been burning, in one form or another, for two millennia
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Sean Boots @bluesky.sboots.ca · 11/03/2026
New (non-work) blog post! 📝 “Generative AI vegetarianism” sboots.ca/2026/03/11/g...
sboots.ca
Generative AI vegetarianism
Hello, it’s me: I’m a generative AI vegetarian. The tech industry is convinced this is the future; I don’t want any of it, full stop. Why choose generative AI vegetarianism? Just like real-life veget...
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
The Tusk Sandra Harris 2024
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
The Other Side of the Inlet Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun ~ Hul’q’umi’num Coast Salish, Syilx 2021
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Big Spruce Forest, BC Arthur Lismer 1959
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 24/02/2026
For my service design and delivery friends in govt… this paragraph caught my attn. Even with co-design and participatory methods, is the rhetoric of “easy” and “effortless” govt services undermining the more active forms of democracy Peter is advocating for, creating passive consumer publics?
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 20/02/2026
Last fall, I testified before Quebec's Gallant Commission, which was investigating a $900M software debacle at their DMV. This week, after a year of work, they issued their final report. I'm impressed with how the whole commission worked. We have nothing like this in the U.S., but we really should.
cbc.ca
Quebec auto board officials lied to hide costs of botched SAAQclic launch, report concludes | CBC News
Top officials at Quebec's automobile insurance board, known as the SAAQ, deliberately lied to the provincial government for years to conceal colossal cost overruns and issues with its digital transiti...
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 19/02/2026
File under: The Things You See Tendered via Public Procurement... It's not all Salesforce licenses, road resurfacing, and office supplies, you know...
RFP for face painting services at the World Cup
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The School of Good Services @theschoolofgood.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
We've spent January working towards a certain new book launch coming soon... but, back to the day to day! We're just about to kick in to our 2026 public course curriculum for The School of Good Services Any last training budget left? There are a few courses coming up before the end of March.
- Designing Good Services
18th February (GMT)
23rd June (BST)
20th October (BST)

- Stakeholder Leadership
4th February (GMT)
25th June (BST)
22nd October (BST)

- Making the Case for Service Design
4th March (GMT)
30th June (BST)
27th October (GMT)

- Service Design Leadership
24th and 31st March (GMT)
2nd July and 9th July (BST)
29th October and 5th November (GMT)

- Agile Service Design
19th, 26th February and 4th March (GMT)
9th, 16th, 23rd July (MDT)
8th, 15th and 22nd October (BST)
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Centre for Climate Justice @ccj-ubc.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
📣On March 12, ‘Empire of AI’ author @karenhao.bsky.social joins @naomiaklein.bsky.social to lay out the stakes for the most consequential tech arms race in history, and the role we can all play to ensure that AI benefits everyone. 🎟️Tickets: tinyurl.com/EmpireOfAI 🗓️ March 12, 7:30-9:00PM
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Howe Sound - Yesterday, Today and Forever W.P. Weston 1927
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Fir Trees Emily Carr 1935
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Daniel Munro @dkmunro.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
ISED’s use of AI to synthesize the 11,000 consultation submissions is unfortunate, but consultation as the federal government tends to conduct it is insufficient whether AI-assisted or not. Mere listening and summarizing is not democratic engagement. betakit.com/ottawa-relea...
betakit.com
Ottawa releases findings from AI task force and public consultation | BetaKit
The government used AI to parse more than 11,000 submissions that will inform Canada’s new AI strategy.
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1RG @1rg.space · 30/01/2026
Wayfinding will be back on Feb 11th with Bianca Wylie and Hillary Hartley in conversation about civics. luma.com/wayfinding2
luma.com
Wayfinding: Civics · Luma
Wayfinding: conversations about navigating the tensions of tech in modern life. We live in a moment where our trust in tech companies to protect our privacy…
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Canadian Paintings @canadianpaintings.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Beach, Vancouver Island Arthur Lismer n.d.
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Gordon Ross 🇨🇦 @gordonr.ca · 29/01/2026
Auspicious start to the day, as I noticed someone with a copy of Adam Greenfield's Radical Technologies at my morning coffee stop. Amazing how one book can very quickly lead to a nice exchange and some more reading recommendations about shared concerns.
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rumon carter @rumon.ca · 28/01/2026
Love this, wanted to share, from today's Demo Day, by way of design lead Jane. cc @gordonr.ca
Image of a slide displaying the text "A prototype is a series of questions waiting to be answered."
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