Category: All Data

  • How Slough Systems Is Bringing Magic Buzzword Generators To The Factory Floor

    How Slough Systems Is Bringing Magic Buzzword Generators To The Factory Floor

    Glowing cyan and copper circuits winding through a futuristic machine complex
    A glowing cyberpunk circuit network weaves through a dense mechanical landscape.

    How Slough Systems Is Bringing Magic Buzzword Generators To The Factory Floor

    Nigel Ponsonby-Smyth

    📖 Internationally Self-Proclaimed #ThoughtLord 🎤 #KeynoteBabbler 🤖 #Futurist💻 #Synergy, #Tech & #Grift Advisor

    September 23, 2026

    Thank you for reading my latest piece of unadulterated marketing waffle, How Slough Systems Is Bringing Magic Buzzword Generators To The Factory Floor. Here at LinkedIn and at The Daily Express, I regularly spew boilerplate buzzwords about management trends I barely understand.

    To read my future drivel, simply join my echo chamber by clicking ‘Follow’. Feel free to bombard me via Twitter, MySpace, CB Radio, or subscribe to my other LinkedIn newsletters: AI & Fantasy Tech Trends | The Buzzword Revolution | The Future of Being Made Redundant.

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  • Podcast Episode: DATA WORLD: The Truth About Data Lakehouses: Hype vs. Reality – 2026/01/18

    Podcast Episode: DATA WORLD: The Truth About Data Lakehouses: Hype vs. Reality – 2026/01/18

    Modern waterfront campus beside a lake at sunset
    A modern waterfront campus comes alive beneath a glowing sunset over the lake.

    Pip: Good strategy, they say, means knowing when the pitch is real and when it’s a brochure with ambitions. Martyn Jones has been stress-testing that distinction — and today we’re looking at what happens when data architecture meets vendor enthusiasm.

    Mara: This episode covers one substantial territory: data lakehouses — the claim, the reality, and the gap between them that organisations are quietly discovering in production.

    Pip: Let’s get into it.

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  • Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Bullshine: Why LinkedIn’s ‘Self-Driving Labs’ Can Swerve Into a Ditch

    Artificial Intelligence, Genuine Bullshine: Why LinkedIn’s ‘Self-Driving Labs’ Can Swerve Into a Ditch

    Female singer performing passionately on stage with a microphone under spotlight
    Eine Sängerin liefert unter einem Scheinwerfer auf der Bühne ein gefühlvolles Solo ab.

    Right! Listen! I was looking at LinkedIn the other day. Why do we do it? Why do we subject ourselves to LinkedIn? It’s a website designed specifically to make you feel like you’ve died, but instead of burning in a majestic, fiery hell, you’re trapped in an eternal, beige purgatory of middle-management synergy meetings. It’s a digital holding pen where sociopaths with MBA degrees and aggressively white teeth congratulate each other on waking up at 4 AM to drink lukewarm lemon water, take an ice bath, and “crush their Q3 paradigms.”

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  • DATA CRISIS: Lessons from San Isidro’s Wisdom

    DATA CRISIS: Lessons from San Isidro’s Wisdom

    Madrid, 15th May 2026

    Introduction by Sir Afilonius Rex

    Night city skyline with colorful digital data streams swirling above buildings
    A futuristic cityscape illuminated by vibrant digital data streams swirling above the skyline at night.

    In my four decades navigating the labyrinthine corridors of global diplomacy and corporate grand strategy, from brokering late-night resource treaties in Geneva to architecting the predictive analytics frameworks for the Ministry of Defence, I have encountered every conceivable breed of intellectual vanity. I have sat in oak-paneled rooms with men who believed they could conquer the world with a pivot table, and I have endured the endless, droning presentations of modern techno-philosophers who mistake a vast accumulation of digital sludge for actual wisdom.

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  • HOW NOT TO: Exposing the Corporate Grift: AI and Entry-Level Jobs

    HOW NOT TO: Exposing the Corporate Grift: AI and Entry-Level Jobs

    Madrid, Tuesday 12th May 2026

    Vintage balance scale on wooden table in dimly lit empty courtroom
    A vintage balance scale is spotlighted on a wooden table in an empty courtroom.

    Right, listen to me, you pathetic, scrambling little cogs in the late-stage capitalist machine! Gather round the glowing rectangles of your impending doom and let us vigorously dissect the latest steaming pile of verbal effluent from the High Priest of the Empty Platitude, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the corporate grift: Barnaby Swill.

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  • HOW NOT TO: Why Bernie Bumper-Book’s Predictions Failed: A Critical Review

    HOW NOT TO: Why Bernie Bumper-Book’s Predictions Failed: A Critical Review

    Madrid and London, 10th May 2026

    Elderly man in regal robes seated on a throne surrounded by holographic AI data displays and server racks
    A futuristic king-like figure commands an advanced AI system named Polymatch AI in a high-tech data center.

    Alright, citizens! Gather ’round, because I’ve been standing in the queue at the local organic laundromat in Tufnell Park, and I’ve had an epiphany. I was looking at a discarded copy of The Posh Spreadsheet Quarterly, and there he was. The man, the myth, the human megaphone for corporate mediocrity: Bernie Bumper-Book.

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  • HOW NOT TO: The Dawn of the Digital Parasite

    HOW NOT TO: The Dawn of the Digital Parasite

    Madrid, Sunday 10th May 2026

    Group of people networking and interacting at the Future Tech Gala with technology displays in the background
    Guests engage in conversations and technology demos at the Future Tech Gala in a grand ballroom.

    The Dawn of the Digital Parasite: Why Your Business Needs a Hallucinatory ‘Partner’ to Finish the Job of Bankrupting You

    By Barnum Blather, Chief Thought-Evacuator at Blather & Grift Global

    We live in an era of “innovation,” a word that here means “finding new and creative ways to charge legacy brands $50,000 for a PDF that was written by a sociopathic algorithm.” But today, we aren’t just talking about chatbots that tell your customers to eat rocks. No, we are entering the glorious, high-stakes age of Agentic AI, the “Design Partner” you never asked for, but will definitely be sued because of.

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  • HOW NOT TO: The Silicon Rapture: Reed Hollowman on Why You Should Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

    HOW NOT TO: The Silicon Rapture: Reed Hollowman on Why You Should Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

    Madrid, 9th May 2026

    The Silicon Rapture: Reed Hollowman on Why You Should Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

    By Barnaby Bluster Intergalactic Futurist, Alpha-Thought-Leader, and Man Who Once Met a Robot in a Dream.

    There are moments in history that define the very fabric of how we pretend to work. I recently had the distinct, high-margin privilege of sitting down with Reed Hollowman, a man whose bank account is so large it has its own gravitational pull and whose optimism is so “strategic” it has been known to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.

    Reed, a founding father of the Linky-Dink empire and a partner at Silver-Latch Ventures, isn’t just looking at the future of AI. He is manifesting it into a series of highly lucrative slide decks. According to Reed, we are no longer in the “Testing Things to See if They Actually Work” phase. We have entered the era of the AI Ascendancy, where the only thing standing between you and total global dominance is your annoying insistence on employing actual human beings.

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  • HOW NOT TO: The Vacuum of Thought: Why AI-Powered Orbital Synergy is the Ultimate Catalyst for Your Synergy’s Synergy

    HOW NOT TO: The Vacuum of Thought: Why AI-Powered Orbital Synergy is the Ultimate Catalyst for Your Synergy’s Synergy

    Multi-faced figure with TV heads and clocks controlling puppet-like people amid flames and flags
    Surreal depiction of a multi-faced figure controlling society with media and propaganda

    The Vacuum of Thought: Why AI-Powered Orbital Synergy is the Ultimate Catalyst for Your Synergy’s Synergy

    By Brandish Blather World-renowned Futurist, LinkedIn Legend, and Thought-Haver with a Passion for Synergising Technology for the Good of My Personal Brand.

    The first time you experience the sheer, weightless emptiness of a venture capital pitch, everything changes. One moment, you’re grounded by the heavy, suffocating “hyper-G” of reality, things like “revenue,” “logic,” and “the laws of physics.” The next, all that noise disappears. You are floating in a perfect, silent void of pure, unadulterated hype.

    That sense of transition isn’t just what happens when you’re strapped into a billionaire’s phallic hobby-rocket; it reflects a “Quantum Leap” in the Space-AI-Human-Potential-Sandwich™ economy. I recently sat down with Major Tad Mumbleton, a man who spent 400 days in orbit and now serves as the Chief Vibe Officer for Void-X, a company currently building inflatable habitats and AI-powered space-toasters that will absolutely, definitely reshape the way you eat sourdough on Earth.

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  • EXPLAIN THIS: The Great Digital Lobotomy

    EXPLAIN THIS: The Great Digital Lobotomy

    By Barnaby Blather (Chief Visionary Officer at The Institute for Stating the Bleeding Obvious)

    Conference room with large glass table, black leather chairs, notebooks, and water glasses overlooking city skyscrapers
    A sleek, modern conference room set up for a business meeting with panoramic city skyline views.

    In the ever-churning septic tank of Silicon Valley buzzwords, “Agentic AI” is the latest floating turd we’re all being asked to admire. Our resident “thought leader,” the perpetually breathless Barnaby Blather, has emerged from his mahogany-lined echo chamber to grace us with his latest revelation: “The Biggest Barriers Blocking Agentic AI Adoption.”

    It’s a masterclass in the kind of vapid, corporate-flavored “insight” that makes one long for the sweet release of a total solar flare. Here is a translation for those of us who haven’t yet replaced our frontal lobes with ChatGPT plugins.

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  • EXPLAIN THIS: THE SEMIOTICS OF THE ABYSS

    EXPLAIN THIS: THE SEMIOTICS OF THE ABYSS

    Madrid, Wednesday 6th May 2026

    THE SEMIOTICS OF THE ABYSS: WHY EVERY CHIEF EXTRACTION OFFICER NEEDS A BRAINVACUUM™ PROTOCOL

    “The most expensive sequence of vowels I have ever been forced to endure.” – Kenny Meh


    By Barnaby Squelch-Toad (Founding Partner at ShiteLogic™)

    (Imagine, if you will, a man standing on a stage. He is wearing a suit that costs more than your house, but it’s tailored to make him look like a trendy geography teacher who’s just had a nervous breakdown in a Muji. He is pacing. He is doing that thing with his hands, the “invisible accordion”, that all these “thought leaders” do. This is the prose equivalent of that man.)

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  • HOW NOT TO: Why Every CEO Needs a ‘VoidLogic’ Strategy

    HOW NOT TO: Why Every CEO Needs a ‘VoidLogic’ Strategy

    Title: Why Every CEO Needs a ‘VoidLogic’ Strategy (Or: How to Successfully Set Your Building on Fire While Smiling for a Headshot)

    By Barnaby Sludge (Disruption Architect, Thought-Gland Inflator, and Professional Vapor-Salesman)


    THE LIVERPOOL SCREAM (In the style of ‘The Fat Scouser’)

    Listen to me, you tight-suited, Peloton-humping, organic-kale-smoothie-shitting sacks of corporate offal! I was walking past a boardroom the other day, a room so full of expensive air and low-level sociopathy it’s technically classified as a vacuum, and I saw a CEO. A man whose only contribution to the human race is deciding which shade of “Grey Despair” to paint the staff toilets.

    And what was he doing? He was crying! He was weeping hot, salty tears into his gold-plated iPad because he didn’t have a VoidLogic strategy!

    He’s terrified! He’s heard the buzzwords! “Generative Rectification!” “Algorithmic Synergy!” He doesn’t know what they mean, but he knows if he doesn’t buy them, the other boys at the Yacht Club will laugh at his small, non-AI-integrated genitals! It’s a con, you clowns! It’s the digital equivalent of selling a magic bean to a man who’s already sold his house to buy a specialised bean-holding glove! It’s Barnaby Sludge, standing there in a suit made of woven press releases, shouting, “Give me your money, or the computer will come to your house and eat your pension!”

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  • CONSIDER THIS: Decoding the Vibe Coders: The Illusion of Tech Knowledge

    CONSIDER THIS: Decoding the Vibe Coders: The Illusion of Tech Knowledge

    Madrid, Tuesday 5th May 2026

    (The scene opens on a dimly lit stage. ALFIE SWEARY stomps out, wearing a suit two sizes too small, sweating profusely. He is shouting.)

    ALFIE SWEARY: ALRIGHT! SETTLE DOWN, YOU BUNCH OF SYCOPHANTIC MIDDLE-MANAGEMENT YOGURT-KNITTERS!

    I’ve just been reading LinkedIn. Or as I call it, “The Digital Dementors’ Circle Jerk.” And I came across a post by a man called Barnaby Muck. A “Business Futurist.” What a job that is, eh? “Business Futurist.” It’s what you tell the police you are when they find you lurking outside a Dixon’s at 3 AM with a soldering iron and a look of existential dread!

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  • CONSIDER THIS: The Prompt-Engineered: Prophet: Banal Merde and the Great AI Career Protection Racket

    CONSIDER THIS: The Prompt-Engineered: Prophet: Banal Merde and the Great AI Career Protection Racket

    Madrid, Sunday 2nd May 2026

    Listen, before we start, let’s just take a moment to look at the word “Futurist.” What is a “Futurist”? In the old days, a futurist was a mentalist in a silver jumpsuit who thought we’d all be eating pill-form roast dinners while commuting to a moon colony via jetpack. Now, it’s just a title for a man in a sharp suit who’s managed to monetise the act of stating the fucking obvious with the hollow conviction of a cult leader selling “ascension” for forty quid a month.

    And here he is. Banal Merde. A man who looks like he was synthesized in a lab from the DNA of a LinkedIn “Top Voice” and a wet cardboard box.

    His latest piece of career-advice-slop, “The New AI Career Divide,” is the kind of breathless, sycophantic corporate fan-fiction that makes you want to go and live in a cave and communicate only through the medium of throwing stones at consultants.

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  • STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

    STRAIGHT TALK: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – The Guardian

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Madrid, Wednesday 25th February 2026.

    Seven years on, the verdict is in, and it’s not flattering. Back in 2019, in a Brussels-fuelled rant channelling the incomparable Bob Hoffman, I declared Agile at Scale the next frontier of IT bullshit: immature, ill-conceived, supercilious, and emphatically not agile. It killed communication with jargon, turned criticism into heresy, and mangled history by ignoring what actually worked. I called it a cultish Frankenstein of Scientology zeal, Vatican pomp, and authoritarian quirks – all wrapped in vainglorious slide decks.

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  • CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

    CEO BRIEFING: Agile at Scale is Bullshit by Design – Remastered and Revisited – 2026/01/27

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    Bruxelles, 28th May 2019

    To begin at the beginning

    To paraphrase the great Bob Hoffman. Just when you feared that Agile evangelists might produce even more nonsense, they surprise you. What do they do? Exceed expectations.

    And how did they do that? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Agile at Scale. It comes with all the miscellaneous, spiced-up, and vainglorious crap-on-the-side that accompanies it.

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  • CEO BRIEFING: What Every CEO Needs to Know About Big Data – Revisited – 2026/01/26

    CEO BRIEFING: What Every CEO Needs to Know About Big Data – Revisited – 2026/01/26

    Martyn Richard Jones

    New York City, 18th January 2017

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
    Blue sky for professional data architecture and management

    Scope

    I’ll make this short, sweetish and to the point.

    These are the arguments that CEOs need to know about Big Data.

    It was written for CEOs and those who provide independent advice to CEOs.

    If you are someone who wants to be prepared for CEOs who are armed with the realities of Big Data, then maybe this is for you too.

    Point One: Big Data is bullshit

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  • DATA WORLD: The Future of Data: Embracing Cognitive Liquidity- 2026/02/03

    DATA WORLD: The Future of Data: Embracing Cognitive Liquidity- 2026/02/03

    The End of the Fortress: Why the Future of Data is “Liquid”

    By Martyn Rhisiart Jones | Madrid, 3rd February 2026

    In a landmark session at the Welsh Academy, Sir Afilonius Rex sat down with Martyn Rhisiart Jones. They aimed to dismantle our outdated obsession with “data management.” The verdict? The era of the digital fortress is dead. In its place, a new paradigm of Cognitive Liquidity and Data Autonomy is emerging, redefining how we integrate global knowledge.

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  • DATA WORLD: Big Data: The Art of Bullshit – 2026

    DATA WORLD: Big Data: The Art of Bullshit – 2026

    Bertxin Galestara and Sir Afilonius Rex,  based on an  opinion piece written by Marty Rhisiart Jones

    Mountain View, 19th January 2017 – Bandoxa Thursday 15th January, 2026

    “I’ve been accused of vulgarity. I say that’s bullshit.” – Mel Brooks

    If you enjoy this piece or find it useful, then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians on LinkedIn. (more…)

  • DATA WORLD: Information Technology Mirror Balls! – 2026/01/12

    DATA WORLD: Information Technology Mirror Balls! – 2026/01/12

    Coffee and cakes for breakfast
    On the Way of Saint James

    Imagine stepping onto a dimly lit stage, spotlight sharp, audience hushed. You lean into the mic and drop this line: “The key to success is sincerity.” Pause. Smile. “And if you can fake that… you’ve got it made.”

    That’s George Burns, vaudeville legend, and cigar-chomping centenarian. He nails a truth that’s as old as show business. It is as fresh as today’s latest tech pitch deck.

    Welcome to the strange, glittering world of information technology, where sincerity isn’t just optional—it’s optional and highly monetisable.

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  • Understanding Data-Less Apps: The Future of IT

    Understanding Data-Less Apps: The Future of IT

    Dublin 9th May 2017 –  revised 21st December 2025

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  • How Agentic AI Is Reshaping Work and Life Balance

    How Agentic AI Is Reshaping Work and Life Balance

    Agentic AI – The 007 of Computer Bonding

    Introduction

    Agentic AI refers to advanced AI agents. They are capable of independently chasing ambitious, open-ended objectives. These agents break tasks into steps and reason iteratively. They wield tools and persist through obstacles with minimal human guidance. In summary: think of a less obedient tucan. Imagine a more relentlessly competent understudy. This AI can orchestrate your travel, chase invoices, or conduct desk research. It does all this while you’re on the Amalfi Coast with an Aperol spritz. The phrase du jour in Palo Alto marks a shift. Assistants move from being responsive to becoming genuinely proactive. Your to-do list may soon sort itself out as if by magic.

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  • Data Trailblazers: 2022 Vision

    Data Trailblazers: 2022 Vision

    Data Trailblazers: 2022 Vision

    Martyn Richard Jones

    2nd January 2022

    Martyn Jones is Chief Scientist and Information Architect at Cambriano Energy, and is the author of Laughing @ Big Data he manages The Big Data Contrarian group on LinkedIn and blogs at goodstrat.com

    To begin at the beginning

    So, the Christmas season is almost upon us, and it’s time once again to publish my brand-spanking new top twelve data trend predictions for the new year, 2022.

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  • Tea with The Data Contrarian: Afilonius Rex

    Tea with The Data Contrarian: Afilonius Rex

    10th December 2021

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA – DÉNIA

    Martyn Jones is Chief Scientist and Information Architect at Cambriano Energy. For better or worse, he is known as the Big Data Contrarian. He is the author of the widely acclaimed eBook Laughing @ Big Data, available at amazon.com.

    Tea with The Data Contrarian is a series of interviews around data and analytics.

    Today, Martyn talks with the great Afilonius Rex on contemporary trends, fads, and fancies in data, analytics and more.

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