Britain Needs Techno Dynamists

Posted on 20/05/2013 by

In an excellent column for CityAM today, Stian Westlake makes the argument that optimists need to run the economy in order to foster economic growth. This is an argument that I have been making for years and in various forms. It is the same argument that the prescient Virginia Postrel made in her 1998 book The Future and its Enemies. Optimists and risk takers, often one is the same, are the future of business, technology, industry, education and everything in between. Let’s take a quick look at why this is so. Continue reading →

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2013

Posted on 28/03/2013 by

It has been a busy and interesting year so far, but one that has kept me from blogging on a regular basis. I spend so much time writing for other publications that I find it restful to read and do hands on projects. Quite a far cry from policy work.

Hopefully I will write more in the meantime, but for now this will just have to do.

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Transcript of UK Intervention at WCIT-12

Posted on 13/12/2012 by

As you all may know, I’ve been attending the WCIT-12 in Dubai. We are at the very end of the treaty negotiation and the UK will not be signing. Here is a transcript of the UK’s intervention making that statement (from the ITU’s transcript service)

UK: thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you for your continues — continuing efforts to find an acceptable outcome.
Like the United States, I now find myself in the position and with enormous regret of having to explain the position of my delegation.  Continue reading →

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Hunting for Hailes Abbey

Posted on 06/10/2012 by

Over the last week I have been spending most of my time in Gloucestershire. I spent two days this week sitting at the archives going over documents transcribed by an early 20th century antiquarian and I have spent the weekend hunting down supposed stone that was once at Hailes and now in other buildings in the immediate area. This has all been rather different than my ‘day job’, but it has been fun too.

Continue reading →

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Why I won’t be reading Bringing up the Bodies

Posted on 06/06/2012 by

I love reading historical mysteries. (I love reading all mysteries, in fact, and I like Scandinavian noir too, but for the purposes of this blog post I will be sticking to historical mysteries!) In any case, often people recommend to me Hilary Mantel’s work. I know about it, of course, and most people in the UK do or at least come across at some point, but I can’t bring myself get through her work. Anyone would thinking that I would actually like her work due to my mild obsession with English history and historical mysteries. The problem is this however: I am writing up a bit of research from that time period. Continue reading →

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Daily Mash on the new EU Cookies Directive

Posted on 02/06/2012 by

The Mash comes through again:

Image

At least one website is having a bit of fun implementing this burdensome EU mandate.

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Jane Jacobs and the Internet

Posted on 02/05/2012 by

Over the last few years there have been many times when people ask me the same question: why on earth did you decided to study architectural history instead of information systems for a phd? It is a reasonable question, but one that I am tired of answering. I do digital policy and strategy. If we lived in an offline world I would most likely be involved in research and policy work anyway, but it just happens that we have a communication and information medium that faces issues and I enjoy the work that I do around it. But why not do research in this area instead? Continue reading →

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