A Short Review of 2022

notes

In 2022 I set a personal record: the longest continuous stretch in a single city since I started university. For one reason and another it felt as though a great many things could not be done — and yet a great many things happened.

Around the office, most of the restaurants either closed or changed hands, over and over. The good news is that a few roadside places I like held on. Several friends’ companies expanded fast in 2021 and then had to face large layoffs in

1. And one after another I kept hearing that people I had read about in books and seen on television since childhood had died. In a year that so often fell silent, that news stood out sharply. Some things changed for me too, by choice and otherwise: more chances to sit still and go deep on the technical work, and to think about creating value, and about the variables in a life.

The work

I spent part of 2022 starting some genuinely interesting work. On the whole — value produced, research results — call it 80 out of 100. Some projects slipped, though I believe several important results will land in the first quarter of

1. As always, it is a privilege to work with a group of people who are single-minded about doing excellent work. It was a real shame that some colleagues left the team this year; I hope everything goes well for them in their new fields.

To do this new work properly I read a lot of papers across algorithms, biology, chemistry, materials and engineering, and I do think I learned something. I rethought where and in what form algorithms — data-driven AI methods in particular — actually get to be applied. Generative models made enormous progress in 2022: in painting, in conversation, AIGC gave people an explosively large imaginative space. If you think carefully about how AI technology produces commercial value, then rather than saying the best application is wherever large volumes of data are generated, it may be that AI has more room to land where the value of the data is underestimated.

I spent some time specifically on how to amplify the value of algorithms in biology. The main thing I took away is: go with the grain. The complexity of biological systems makes it very hard for us to design an entirely new system ourselves. The better approach is to start from the data, from the standpoint of the biological entity itself, build models that actually guide the work, and develop against the rules biology already follows. Optimising on top of an existing system is a far more efficient route from technology to result.

Finally I spent part of the year thinking about nonlinear growth — mainly, how to find the crossing points of a core technology between fields that look different but are in fact related, and how to design effective mechanisms for exchange and collaboration that amplify the value released by trading technology and data, so the whole grows quickly.

On the organisational side I tried IPD, gamification and so on, and read a number of management books — only to find that at my current half-understanding level, last year’s economist-exam textbook suited me best. So I gathered up some classic MBA texts and started reading. There is a line in Dalio’s Principles that is quite right: we fall into these holes only because we do not know the history. A great many things simply recur, and if you study history seriously you can know more of them.

By the end of 2022 I gradually felt I understood more about concepts I had assumed I already had a grip on — and respected them more. Innovation, for instance. Focus. The relationship between social impact and commercial translation. Financial models. A lot of things have to be thought about from a relaxed state; the thinking is like water held in your palms — you have to watch it quietly, and if you are tense and grip too hard, no idea is left at all.

For 2023 I want to take the application directions I can now see and extend them according to my own understanding, find their focal point, and concentrate on the core technology. I will try to pay closer attention to landing applications, and under a goal of long-term social value, build richer means and paths that reach long-term goals through short-term results. I tried building some processes in 2022 but understand them only superficially. In 2023 I want to concentrate on understanding one or two processes from zero to one, and see whether I can draw out any regularities.

Personal interests

I picked up a few skill points here and there this year. On the guqin I got as far as Ou Lu Wang Ji. On the skateboard I can just about land a fakie 180 — mostly a matter of not being bold enough, or I might have learned more. I gradually got the drawing habit back, did some pencil studies and tried oils. I did not hit the reading target I set at the start of the year, which may have something to do with travelling less. I read an assortment of unrelated books. In the first half of the year I finally finished several books on the Yijing that I had never managed to get through. When bored I did some research into the skeleton of the crucian carp; I may write that up later.

In games, besides continuing to explore Hyrule, the one that stayed with me was playing six or seven endings of Detroit: Become Human — including nuking Detroit. I finally reached the end of Uncharted 4, and played A Way Out. Death Stranding, Beyond, Nioh (punishing), the FFVII remake and Shadow of the Colossus are all still in progress. But the deepest impression was Edith Finch: the fates of the family members, one after another, seem to keep restating the difference between one individual existence and another, and the hollowness of a universal set of values. That may mean rather more given how 2022 went.

In the last month of 2022 I started learning Spanish; I can now ask directions, buy a ticket and order a meal. Also, I am better at lockpicking than I was in 2021, and I replaced both the inner tube and the tyre on my bicycle myself.

Finally

Some things happened in 2022 that had a large impact and about which there was nothing to be done. Those I will digest quietly, in my own time. Looking back at what I expected at the start of the year, a great deal happened that I had not expected. On the whole there were more shocks than pleasant surprises. Still, it is 2023 now. I hope everything gets better in 2023, and that we become braver.