Apparently religion makes you richer, well if you're a country anyway. There's an interesting article in the Economist (via aldaily.com) about the work of Harvard economists Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary. As the piece puts it: "The most striking conclusion is that belief in the afterlife, heaven and hell are good for economic growth. Of these, fear of hell is by far the most powerful, but all three indicators have a bigger impact on economic performance than merely turning up ...
Went to see William J Mitchell give a talk at at Tate Modern last night, to discuss his new book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Some blurb: As physical space and cyberspace become further intertwined, Mitchell investigates the effects of wireless linkage, global interconnection, miniaturization, and portability on our bodies, our clothing, our architecture, our cities, and our uses of space and time. He argues that a world governed less and less by boundaries and more and more...
...interesting piece about one companys efforts to found a revolutionary business model on the discarded fruit of pharmaceutical industry research. THis radical approach shows the benefits of sharing intellectual property information - for the first time we have the idea of a non-profit pharmaceutical company it is based on the idea of tapping into the resource that is the abandoned intellectual property (IP) owned by pharmaceuticals. These are remedies for parasitic diseases such as leishm...
Robert Cooper's new book gets a pretty good review in the Statesman this week. The book builds on his Postmodern State argument published by Demos in 2000.
I love those message board things you get on BBC News Online. There's a brilliant one today inspired by a Country Life poll about Britain's worst eyesores, which apparently include wind farms (I quite like them). My favourite responses so far... "Birmingham" and "Conjunctivitis".
Yet another major tome wondering about the "Paradox of Progress" - ie, why we in the developed West are less happy than you'd predict, from our levels of prosperity - written by US critic Gregg Easterbrook. I'm always interested in the solutions proposed in these arguments - there's been quite a few recently - which always tend towards liberal-left policies. Easterbook's list of unhappiness triggers - envy, lack of sleep, future-shock, "bad news" media - mi...
Just come across a really interesting interview with Norwegian film censor Elisabeth Staksrud (via corante.com) who says, "About two weeks ago, we lifted a ban on all mainstream movies that had been forbidden or cut. That was for our 90-year anniversary. How's that for a birthday gift?" But the even more interesting stuff is on internet regulation. Staksrud is also coordinator for the SAFT program, a government-managed Internet project funded by the European Commission. The idea...
One of my favourite US media commentator Michael Wolff has a new book out called Autumn of the Moguls. In this extract he argues that paying for content has become an un-American activity, with huge implications for media businesses. At Demos we've been asking the related question, who's going to pay for newsgathering in an era where news is 'ambient' (c. Ian Hargreaves); TV current affairs is in decline, and so much of newspapers' budgets are devoted to lifestyle. A strik...
I got a call from a Dutch journalist from Ode magazine who'd seen our ad in New Statesman for Demos-on-a-disc and wanted to write about open access publishing. He told me that Lawrence Lessig - he of the creative commons fame - is working with the BBC on its digital archive project, which is providing the pay-off for Barry Cox's forthcoming Demos pamphlet on the future of television. Things are connecting up nicely.
Young people are getting older sooner, according to the Henley centre. A recent survey from them showed old heads on young shoulders. 50% of the 16-24s surveyed feel at risk from losing a job, and around 30% are concerned about having either no money or no carers in their old age.Are the young unable to live for the moment? How does this tally with the government concern with binge drinking and drug taking amongst the young?