Last Friday was Tom Bentley’s last day in the office at Demos. After seven years as Director (and three as my boss), he’s off to Melbourne, Australia to take up a job as adviser to the Premier there. By the looks of this article in the Sunday Times, I don’t think he’s afraid to burn a few bridges with the Blair camp. Have to say [...]
Games and public policy
There’s a good piece on BBC News Online about serious games, including a bit about the apparently successful Cyber Budget in France: “Fed up of people continually complaining about their taxes, France’s ministry of finance developed a video game, so now the people themselves can have a go at doing the minister’s job of balancing the country’s budget.” A few years back I played a [...]
The Indian blog ban episode of 2006
So it looks like the block on a number of major blog hosts in India was cock-up rather than conspiracy. The story going round is that ISPs misinterpreted requests to block a few individual blogs hosted on generic blogging domains and shut down access to the whole lot. The coverage (particularly by Boing Boing) made me realise how fragile India’s international progressive brand is. The [...]
How not to run an online community
For a while now, I’ve been watching the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site with increasing despondency. Almost from Day 1, it’s developed a toxic atmosphere simply because of the way that the technology is designed. Last night I got an exasperated email from my friend Dougald (which had a subject line I won’t repeat before the watershed) about Georgina Henry’s announcement that you’ll only be [...]
China’s Green Revolution?
I’ve noticed quite a few stories about increasing interest in environmental performance by the Chinese Government recently. This one says the Government is to spend $175 billion (yep, that says billion) on an environmental cleanup. This one says that Bill Dunster (who designed my house) might get a big gig in China and New Scientist also ran a piece (sub reqd) about all the interest [...]
If the blogs are right…
… we’re in trouble. Just logged on and noticed the ‘top search this hour’ on Technorati is ‘World War III’.
Benkler’s Wealth of Networks
I’ve got a review of Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks in todays Financial Times Magazine. Since the FT website doesn’t let you comment, I’d be interested to know what other people who’ve read it think. Here’s an excerpt from the piece: “There is, of course, something perverse about the fact that perhaps the best work yet about the fast-moving, enthusiast-driven internet has taken [...]