Manifest: Disrupting Through Dissent - The Drive to Questioning Conformity

“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”
Albert Einstein

I've got a folder on my laptop with dozens of half-finished articles. Some are just titles, others are nearly complete but never quite made it past my own critical filter. Procrastination might be too kind a word for it – I think I've been hiding behind perfectionism and, if I'm honest, a fair bit of fear about putting my thoughts out there.

Recent events have given me a bit of a wake-up call, though. I can't keep sitting on these ideas indefinitely. So I've decided to commit to actually publishing regularly, even if the writing isn't polished. I've made a list of topics I want to explore – technology, startups, contrarian thinking – and I'm going to work through them methodically.

Will it be brilliant? Probably not. Am I prepared for criticism? Well, I'm trying to be. But I reckon there might be others out there who share some of these views, and maybe starting conversations is more important than crafting perfect prose.

The name "Dissent Ink" probably sounds a bit dramatic. I chose it because I'm interested in ideas that push back against accepted wisdom, though I'm aware that sounds rather grandiose. What I mean is questioning whether we're doing things the right way just because that's how they've always been done.

Dissent gets a bad reputation sometimes. It's easier to go along with consensus than to suggest alternatives, especially in tech where there's often a "best practice" orthodoxy. But some of the most interesting developments seem to come from people who were willing to ignore conventional wisdom – though obviously, not all contrarian thinking leads somewhere useful.

The tricky bit is distinguishing between valuable dissent and just being difficult for the sake of it. I suspect I'll get this wrong sometimes, but I'd rather err on the side of asking awkward questions than staying silent.

I'm planning to include sources for the ideas I'm discussing, though I'll try to avoid the echo chamber problem where everyone cites the same handful of popular business books. There's probably more interesting thinking happening in academic papers and smaller blogs than in the bestseller lists.

Each article will include music that influenced my thinking whilst writing – partly because I find connections between different creative mediums interesting, partly because it might help readers understand where I'm coming from.

I'll also add text-to-speech functionality because I know plenty of people prefer listening to reading, especially for longer pieces. Though I should warn you that my writing voice probably doesn't translate brilliantly to audio.

Where This Leads

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what I'm hoping to achieve beyond getting these ideas out of my head and onto paper (or screen). If it encourages other people to question assumptions or explore different approaches, that would be satisfying. If it just helps me clarify my own thinking, that's probably worthwhile too.

The world doesn't need another tech blog telling people how to disrupt industries or change the world. But it might benefit from more thoughtful disagreement and fewer people nodding along with whatever's trending on Twitter. Whether I'm capable of providing that remains to be seen.

The real test will be whether I can maintain this beyond the initial enthusiasm. Historically, my follow-through on personal projects has been patchy at best. But perhaps committing publicly will help with accountability – or at least provide some entertaining documentation of yet another abandoned endeavour.