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• Has wonking lost its point? Formerly of FPC, Rob Blackhurst writes in the New Statesman this week that whilst think tanks and their policy wonks have proliferated, their influence on policy has declined sharply. The reason he suggests is not just that there are too many voices (which you might think would lead to more extreme opinions each clamouring for attention) but that they have slipped into a mire of uninteresting wonking necessary to please their corporate sponsors. Demos gets special mention here as having been... continue reading Posted by James Page on 28th January 2005 Comments (1)
• Webb Essay 2004 The 2004 Webb Essay competition asked "Can Democracy be Exported?". My winning entry is online on the FPC website. continue reading Posted by James Page on 9th December 2004 Comments (3)
• Telephony wants to be free What do KaZaA and a telephony company called Skype have in common? A lot, and not just that both were founded by the same pair of iconoclasts Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Having thoroughly disrupted the big players in the music industry, they have decided to focus the power of "peer-to-peer" technology on the slumbering giants of the telecoms industry. As with KaZaA, Skype allows PCs using broadband to connect themselves into a network sending data (this time phone calls) both legally and... continue reading Posted by James Page on 6th July 2004
• Step by Step He doesn't, of course, go on to say directly how this can be achieved or that innovation networks are the future, but it is surely a step in the right direction that he is now publically proclaiming many of the premises on which Hargreaves' argument is built. Normington does make reference to the significant job cuts which are looming at the DfES, and it is easy to get the impression that this is the real spur for accepting that the centre no longer can or should lead the way. Either way, it... continue reading Posted by James Page on 2nd July 2004
• How powerful is open source? A few drawbacks make it unlikely - open source is very difficult to apply to goods which are not information rich; at present it tends to imitate existing goods rather than support innovation; and, ironically, some of the motivation necessary for the free labour is reliant on the desire to overthrow capitalism's monoliths - it might therefore be parasitic upon rather than threatening to capitalism.The second article examines the burgeoning role of open source within a specific discipline which... continue reading Posted by James Page on 14th June 2004 Comments (2) | Trackbacks (1)
• The impact of the new young Having studied in Leeds, and lived in Headingley along with the rest of the 74,000 strong student population, the pattern is starkly apparent and the figures must be much higher than the national averages above. As well as the economic issues concerned with students renting in the housing market, I would venture to suggest that this reflects a strong social divide as well. How many families (let alone OAPs) want to endure the noise, disruption and not infrequent heroic acts of drunkenness by... continue reading Posted by James Page on 26th May 2004 Comments (1)
• Learning about Personalisation A very worthy and valuable successor to Working Laterally, Charlie Leadbeater's pamphlet is the second in the series produced in partnership with the DfES and the National College for School Leadership.Not even in print yet, you can now download a copy of Learning about Personalisation from the website. continue reading Posted by James Page on 10th May 2004
• Personalisation vs. Innovation? An article on business innovation in this week's Economist, cites Gillette's latest razor as symptomatic of the fact that big companies in particular are finding it increasingly difficult to innovate on anything more than an incremental scale. One factor which is used to explain this is the contemporary breakdown of stable mass markets such that nowadays "no innovation is an island". Is this a positive sign that markets are more mature than they used to be - offering highly personalised... continue reading Posted by James Page on 27th April 2004
• Enter the Matrix - The structure of the network society is dictated by forms of communiciation - all communication between state and citizen must take place through the media network, but other forms of citizen-to-citizen comunication (mobile phones etc) allow bottom up communication and mobilisation which is beyond the control of the centre- There is a crisis surrounding the nation state which is now typically more a hub for connecting networks than a site of power in itself - he pointed to the devolving of... continue reading Posted by James Page on 19th March 2004 Comments (3)
• Jane Perrone, The Guardian 16.10.03 Demos opens up Demos has gone open source. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the political think tank is putting more than 150 books and essays online in a bid to allow the viral spread of its ideas. The fully searchable archive is arranged around five themes: democracy, learning, enterprise, global change and quality of life. Among the works available without the usual copyright restrictions are the writings of Zygmunt Bauman, Roger Scruton and David Blunkett, plus a recent paper by Douglas... continue reading Posted by James Page on 16th October 2003

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