Independent writing by Duena Blomstrom on AI and humanity, Human Debt, power, technology, and the human cost of progress. Long-form essays and subscriber-only work exploring what we’re building — and

An Open Letter to All of us into Tech and Humanity Thriving

To my regular readers: I know I promised my next article to be "For my sanity, I choose to believe this is/isn't AI" and I was also happily head-down in Human-AI Execution Pods changing the world on their own lanes, when this moment

Declassifying the Secret Sauce - Continuity and Execution Governance to Clear Execution Debt

Psychological Safety was never the final layer, HumanDebt™ compounds with TechDebt and transforms into ExecutionDebt™. The only way to counteract the debt is continuity governance.

The Execution Illusion

Most systems report execution. Few organisations can prove it. What looks like progress may be something else entirely.

Living through the Polycrisis

WWIII started, Fascism is rampant and unchallenged, history effectively dead. AI Bros are buying and selling morality and the same guys get the contracts while the Epstein Files are disqualifying humanity. UCLA calls it a lack of narrative coherence. We can't see ahead. Not really. Not anymore.

What the Future of Humans at Work Needs

That doesn’t mean everyone is ready or willing to embrace the change. For evident reasons I write and speak about a lot, accepting change…

DevOps Knows Better but Doesn’t Do Better (Yet?)

If I had a dollar for every time that a tech leader with their heart in the right place, stopped their efforts to better the developer’s lives -and ultimately productivity- because they were told off by HR, I’d afford to donate our software forever.

How We -May Have- Killed Agile and What to Do to Revive It in 2025

2025 Is it the year where we sort out this death of Agile debate?

Agile by Heart not McKinsey PowerPoint

"Looking at the frontrunners in Agilty - Google, Spotify, GM or Amazon - none of the Big 4 consultancies can say "yes, that's me, I wrote this magical 50M- strategy-deck" Duena Blomstrom 2018

Nobody Gets Fired for Buying IBM - But They Should

A classic enterprise phrase hides a deeper truth: decisions made to avoid blame quietly accumulate Human Debt. This essay revisits why “nobody gets fired for buying IBM” was never about safety - and why courage, not risk aversion, is the real competitive advantage.

Building a Future where Humans Vibe and AI Codes

Putting devs back at the helmet will be hard - let me spell it out to the techies -at the risk they hate me for it: when it comes to this pivotal moment in the life of your craft, you can do better than this outrage and help build the next era of tech

Mindless “AI or DIE” Will Worsen Your Human Debt™

Forget AI in the computer industry (where indeed the discourse is complex as its appearance shakes the very foundation of software crafting, engineering, product and design alike), what about it everywhere else? How does it affect every other employee in every other industry and what’s first...

Why DEI Must Stay: The Differents, the Regulars and the Intersections

Navigating multiple views of neurodiversity whilst designing ways to maintain high levels of empathy for all has been exceptionally difficult in the ever more divisive -and divided- fractured organisational landscape of today. Speaking to smart people-leaders has helped me see new facets of...