In my long and active life I have found material which has got me thinking and which, years later when I have returned to it, has stood the test of time. Much of it does not fit into a convenient classification. But "Computer says No" is not a reason for not sharing this material in my personal web site. So on this page I plan to have some unstructured links to material to start conversations and debates.
I start this section with a TED talk given by Matt Ridley in 2010 where he expanded upon some ideas he had originally developed in his book "The Origins of Virtue" in 1996. I hope that a new generation which wasn't even born when either of these works were written and created enjoys engaging with Matt's work. The TED talk is called "When ideas have sex".
Next I have a link to another book from a decade ago "Capitalism's Toxic Assumptions: Redefining Next Generation Economics" This was written by Eve Poole who has since developed and broadened her forensic analysis and essential thinking. Today "Capitalism's Toxic Assumptions" is well worth re-reading. Eve's analysis has since been reflected in newer works such as Diane Coyle's Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be whose analysis needs to become mainstream policy. I would love to see Eve Poole and Diane Coyle appearing in back-to-back lectures and especially working together in formulating the paradigms for our new age of Artificial Intelligence.
It is not my practice to endorse US presidential candidates but I make an exception with Larry Lessig who, for a while back in 2016, put himself forward as a Democratic presidential candidate but withdrew his nomination before the primaries. Larry’s body of work and thinking is varied. It was he who came up with the concept of Creative Commons and went about building its US and global infrastructure. Larry invented the presentation technique known as the Lessig Method, which features rapid-fire slides with minimal text (often one word or short phrases) synchronised to his speech. Others have copied it, but nobody does it better than Larry. His early books remain relevant and prescient. Code is Law (1999) and Remix (2008) are foundation works on how the ‘computer says no’ feature can be used for good or evil and how society needs to sensibly review copyright laws. (In my engagement with the UK Civil Service I have built upon Larry’s Code is Law concept in policy presentations). He has, in more recent times, considered the impact of Artificial Intelligence - here his ideas join those of other commentators and it is not yet possible to say whether Larry is correct in his analysis. But on the topic of corruption in US politics and the disastrous state of the US federal and state systems of government there can be no better place to start than Larry’s presentation to The Long Now Foundation given in 2012 called “How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It”. Fourteen years later, watching Larry’s presentation again suggests that Larry, like Cassandra, has been gifted with the curse of prophecy. And Cory Doctorow’s recent book “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” shows that, like Cassandra, nobody has taken heed of Larry’s warnings. If only some hedge fund bro had got behind Larry and created a political movement to eliminate corruption in the US Congress and at state level.