– The beginning of the method

The moment that set this essay in motion wasn’t dramatic. It was just my phone, rocking gently on the desk, refusing to do the one simple thing I needed it to do.

I didn’t expect the first words to begin with something so ordinary. But that’s where it began. I was mid-call, trying to jot a quick handwritten note on my Samsung S26 Ultra, and the device – a flagship of modern engineering – wouldn’t stay still long enough to write on.

So I reached for the back of an envelope.

It was such a small thing. A tiny failure. But it was also a signal: a system designed to support my work couldn’t manage one of the simplest parts of the task, and the simplest analogue tool in the room stepped in to repair the gap.

The phone wasn’t the issue. It simply joined a growing list of systems that promise simplicity while demanding ever more administration from the people using them.

That moment – the reach for the envelope – is the kind of moment I pay attention to. Not because it’s quaint, but because it tells the truth about where we are.

And in the moment I picked up the pen, a single thought rushed to the fore:

Dig where you stand.

A slogan popularized by archaeologists in the 1970s, now deeply rooted in my social and political thinking.

It’s not an abstraction. I’ve seen what happens the first time someone turns a sod – literally or figuratively – and realises the world is different because of something they did. You can see it in their face. It’s visceral. It’s the moment they understand that change isn’t theoretical or distant; it’s immediate, and it’s theirs.

That’s the kind of understanding I care about: grounded, embodied and shared.

Is there a connection between the small failures in our tools and the larger contradictions in our lives? When systems become increasingly complex, does it become harder to maintain a sense of agency, presence and the belief that our actions can make a difference?

The phone itself may be an example. It is more powerful than the computers that guided spacecraft to the moon. It can connect me instantly to information, colleagues and communities across the world. Yet the simple act of resting it on a desk and writing a note has somehow become more difficult. I do not know the reason. Perhaps the trade-offs were necessary. Perhaps they were commercial. Perhaps they solved problems that mattered more to most people.

But the contradiction remains interesting.

A system has improved in almost every measurable way while becoming less capable of supporting the gesture that revealed it to me. Does every design solve one problem by creating another? The larger screen improves readability but changes the balance of the device. The lighter frame improves portability but alters stability. The software adds capability while asking for more attention. None of these choices is irrational. Yet together they raise a question that interests me: how can a tool become more sophisticated while feeling less accommodating to the work it was meant to support?

The point is not to arrive at ready-made answers. It is to understand something more clearly than before, and to share that understanding. Sometimes understanding changes nothing. Sometimes it changes everything. More often, it helps us recognise where we stand and what we might do next.

Which leaves only this for me to say here: this is just an introduction – a marker in the ground.

There are many paths to follow from here. They cross through technology, work, politics, community, memory and the everyday business of making sense of the world. They intersect in ways that matter for how we live and work today.

The longer exploration begins here, with the simplest gesture: noticing when the system fails, and digging where we stand.

David Marshall
Skerries, January 2026