Adam A. Stokes
Welcome to my personal webpage, where you’ll find a collection of essays on topics I’m actively trying to understand. These are not static publications but live documents that evolve over time as I think in public, refine my views, and respond to new ideas and conversations. If you wish to discuss anything I’ve written, or wish to engage with me on a project or a talk, then please contact me. My primary email address is a.a.stokes@ed.ac.uk.I am Full Professor and Head of the Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Edinburgh and a research-led advisor on robotics, AI, and bioinspired innovation. Outside of the academy I am an active entrepreneur and consultant. I work with organisations to stress-test assumptions about emerging technologies and chart practical paths from prototype to deployment. These essays capture the thinking behind that work—I offer them as a public resource and also as an invitation to collaborate.
My most recent post is shown below, see all essays here.
I’m delighted… no really!
I’m delighted... A phrase that, to me, bears the hallmarks of yet another shameless self-congratulatory LinkedIn post. There is so much delight on LinkedIn. It’s become the default way of starting a post - I’m delighted… It’s lost all meaning, to the point of becoming banal and inviting the reader to switch off or scroll on to the next hubristic post. I’ve been a user of LinkedIn since 2007, I’ve looked at my posts and my delight started eight years ago, before that none of my posts used the expression. It’s become a lexical meme for professionals, like “Strategic leader with a proven track record…” or “After X amazing years at company Y, I’m delighted to share that I’ll be joining company Z” (a nested professional lexical meme). I was thinking about the phrase recently when I recieved a string of emails which all started with the phrase. The delight in these emails, however, was genuine and mutual. I really was delighted to recieve the emails as they contained words of kindness...