FEATURED VOLUME
01 / 06Systems · Incidents · DecisionsBeyond the FirewallThe Reality of Modern IT Operations
The perimeter is not the system. The user transaction is.
01 / 07
Beyond the Firewall · A green screen. A ringing phone.
THE OPERATOR’S LIBRARY
Books for the work that endures.
Six durable texts on systems, security and operational judgement.
Provenance: these texts extend the Field Notes and analysis published here since 2024. Browse Field Notes
Browse the collectionPILOT VOLUME / SAMPLE AVAILABLETHE COLLECTION
01 PUBLISHED · 04 TEXTS IN READING · 01 IN DEVELOPMENTBOOK 01Beyond the FirewallPILOT VOLUME / SAMPLE AVAILABLEBOOK 02
The Human Single Point of FailureVOLUME 02 / IN DEVELOPMENTBOOK 03
The Complexity DebtBOOK 03 / READING PROOFBOOK 04
The Age of Operational AIBOOK 04 / EDITORIAL PROOFBOOK 05
The Operator’s Last JobBOOK 05 / MANUSCRIPTBOOK 06
Security in the Age of AIBOOK 06 / MANUSCRIPT
Beyond the FirewallPILOT VOLUME / SAMPLE AVAILABLEBOOK 02The Human Single Point of FailureVOLUME 02 / IN DEVELOPMENTBOOK 03The Complexity DebtBOOK 03 / READING PROOFBOOK 04The Age of Operational AIBOOK 04 / EDITORIAL PROOFBOOK 05The Operator’s Last JobBOOK 05 / MANUSCRIPTBOOK 06Security in the Age of AIBOOK 06 / MANUSCRIPTFROM FIELD NOTE TO VOLUME
A question, held long enough to change the work.
Field Notes identify a tension. Books hold it long enough to understand it. Learn makes the next decision practicable.
THE CATALOGUE
Beyond the Firewall
The Reality of Modern IT Operations
A short operations essay about the evidence teams trust at the perimeter and the evidence they need when the business path is failing. It follows incidents in which the firewall, dashboard and individual components behave as designed while the transaction at the centre of the work cannot finish. From an uncharted dependency to a temporary rule left in place, the book asks how operators learn to see the conditions their familiar signals do not describe.
The Human Single Point of Failure
Designing for Resilience in People and Process
This volume is in development. Its reading card states the editorial direction only: the human paths, handoffs and decision points that make an operational system fragile when context is held by one person, one memory or one informal arrangement. No manuscript pages are presented until a source can be shared honestly.
The Complexity Debt
Why Modern IT Keeps Getting Harder to Operate
A working manuscript about the work every apparently reasonable layer adds: a tool, control, integration, exception or automation. It follows systems whose individual parts can each be defended while their relationships cannot be explained during a change window or incident. Rather than reducing complexity to a complaint about too many components, the book asks what future attention, recovery knowledge and judgment a decision requires before it enters production.
The Age of Operational AI
How AI Agents Will Change the Way We Build, Operate and Secure Technology
A book about the moment AI stops only answering and begins producing effects through tools, permissions and organisational authority. It starts with a request becoming an objective, then follows the agent through identity, scope, evidence, ownership and recovery. Rather than treating agentic AI as a product category, the book asks what makes a delegation defensible when a system can act before a person has reconstructed the situation.
The Operator’s Last Job
Humans, AI and the Future of IT Operations
A manuscript about the work that becomes difficult to see when operational systems can diagnose and act before a person arrives. Through a bank API restart and a settlement investigation, it separates performing a known command from deciding whether that command belongs in the current situation. The book follows automation from routine work into diagnosis, asking what must remain open for context, permission and the consequences of an action to become part of the decision.
Security in the Age of AI
What Happens When Both Sides of the Security Boundary Become Intelligent?
Twenty-six chapters in five parts take the nine bricks every team owns, firewall, VPN, IAM, EDR, NDR, SIEM, SOC, SOAR and backups, and show what each becomes when interpretation enters the loop. Every brick gets the same treatment: its original job, what changes when it starts to reason, evidence observed in production, and an operator's rule for the next shift. The arc closes on the question the industry avoids: who can still stop a security system that acts on its own judgment.
Questions that endure deserve more than a newsfeed.
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