Life is all about choices, and choices are all about trade offs. This little chart I made - which combines the logic of the Nolan Chart and the "political triangle" in a simplified way focused on the core trade-offs of the various political ideas - has helped me to think about some of the biggest … Continue reading The grand trilemma
Eric Hoffer was an American dock worker. An everyman. Not a rich man, not a man you would have noticed in the streets in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the nameless, voiceless masses we live and work with every day. But he was more than that. He was also a keen observer of human … Continue reading The true believer
I don't know about you, but I cannot live without a few secrets. Without secrets, without a private inner life, we lose our individuality and our sense of self. Today though, we are bombarded with messages telling us that privacy is worth sacrificing for the greater good; for the good of community security, for the … Continue reading Secrets and Lies
The following videos, representing a wide variety of views on the subject, are worth a few minutes of your time if you want to get to grips with the idea of electronic citizenship and the future of the digital nation state - beyond physical borders - for better or for worse. The state's perspective: The … Continue reading Citizenship as a Service – Rethinking the Nation State Beyond Physical Borders
Nudge is a book about "Libertarian Paternalism" - in other words about manipulating people into making better choices that are in their best interests (according to some centralised authority anyway). Tautology aside, the book is a decent take on the more practical (or evil, depending on your point of view) applications of behavioural economics. The … Continue reading Nudge
Banks, central banks, reserve banks - and Bitcoin. They all exist because human beings - individuals like you and me - cannot be trusted. (And because we are greedy, envious and have no self control or patience.) Money is not so much the root of all evil, as evil is the root of all money. … Continue reading Evil is the Root of all Money
Trend analyst, Dion Chang of Flux Trends said that 2018 was the year of voice - the year that we reached "peak screen" and began to move from screen based internet to voice based internet. He was not wrong. Alexa, Siri and Google Home are now common place. Over 43 million US homes have access to … Continue reading Introducing “The Ethernet”
"A great company is a conspiracy to change the world." "Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best." "Computers are compliments for humans, not substitutes. The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make … Continue reading Zero to One
It's no secret, Terry Pratchett is my all-time favourite author, and has been since I was an 11-year-old girl-child, told by my English teacher to "go read this book [Lords and Ladies] at the back of the classroom. You're too smart for what I'm about to teach the rest of them." (true story). Although dismissed … Continue reading A Slip of The Keyboard
I'll be honest. I bought this book because of the title. I was bored, stuck in an airport with a delayed flight, killing time in a bookshop and the title called to me from across the store - after all who doesn't like a good conspiracy? Despite its random impulse purchase status, I loved this book. … Continue reading Conspiracy (with a very interesting cast)
