I had planned to write about revolution this week. I was going to make the case that we’ve been fed a diet of reform as a solution by our governments for wicked problems such as social inequality, climate change, the global obsession with growth and GDP. After that I was going to refer you to…
Month: October 2020
Bullshit jobs and meaningless, busy work
John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that labor-saving technologies and automation would lead to a 15-hour workweek by the time his grandchildren came of age. Keynes never had children and thus never had grandchildren. However, if he’d had, they would not have seen a 15 hour workweek in their lifetime. What they would have experienced…
Fixing education – where we might start
I had the privilege of attending some amazing schools when I was growing up. Schools that had produced important political leaders, national sports captains, titans of industry. And yet, I now look back on my upper middle class education and I feel robbed. I’m not here to bash our education system. Other, more qualified people…
On seeing the world
“This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.” Ernest Hemingway Hemingway calls it ‘seeing’. I like…
Social media is designed to be addictive.
A number of people who’ve watched Social Dilemma on Netflix seem surprised at the revelation that social media is designed to keep them on the platform for as long as possible. This surprised me. So, either watch the movie, or keep reading. The only reason I’m writing this post is because most people don’t seem…
Is innovation dying?
We are living through the most innovative period known to human kind. Innovation in mobile phones have changed our lives, the Internet has become humanity’s repository of knowledge (and stupidity), we are making advances in artificial intelligence that help with everything from differentiating between muffins and dogs to diagnosing cancer. 3D printing will see us…