Peter Bradwell
Researcher
Peter Bradwell is a researcher at Demos. He is interested in the ways that information and knowledge is shared between people, and between people and government...
- Rate my privacy A really useful report from Privacy International - rankings of the major internet companies based on an assessment of their attitudes and practices with regard to their users privacy.It gets its hands dirty at the point where the sharing of information online - and the promises we hear about collaboration and involvement - strike against the protection of information about us and our habits. Great to see policy and practice laid out like this. continue reading on 11th June 2007 in For Your Information Private Lives?
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Philosophy and social hope
American pragmatist philospher Richard Rorty died on Friday, June 8th.
I saw Tony Benn speak a year or so ago. He enthused about history's teachers - those who through their work fire flares into the sky and illuminate, briefly, the world around us. They help us shape our thoughts, and our understanding of how things work. In Philosophy and social hope, Rorty played that role for me. It's an extraordinarily welcoming book - like being introduced to the strange world of philosophy by a very friendly uncle. continue reading on 10th June 2007 -
google me this, google me that...
...how many search results for my personality came back?
What a gift of a headline the Independent gave us: "Google is watching you..." They reported on Google big man Eric Schmidt's suggeston that they ultimately want users to be able to ask questions such as: 'what job should I take' and 'what shall i do tomorrow?' continue reading on 25th May 2007 in For Your Information - Everyday democracy takes on NY The second day of the pdf conference has taken on the form of an 'unconference'. It's led by the attendees - no star speakers, no pre-determined agenda. So we took the opportunity to hold a session on everyday democracy - we'll let you know how we get on. continue reading on 19th May 2007 in For Your Information
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'Web 2.0' and data control
I just found an interesting quote in a Wired interview with Tim O'Reilly. It ties in really nicely with a lot of the work we are doing on information, and social software etc:
"(there is) a major theme of web 2.0 that people haven't yet tweaked to. It's really about data and who owns and controls, or gives the best access to, a class of data..." continue reading on 23rd April 2007 in For Your Information Comments (2) - Trust...dialogue...transparency Reading the Freedom of Information blog today you might come across a couple of interesting quotes. One of them is from Tony Blair who was talking, broadly, about freedom of information in the context of trust in politics: "...the question for us is how do you then get this more sophisticated and profound dialogue about politics today and political issues...' continue reading on 18th April 2007
- Customers also bought: I spotted some news today about Sainsbury's renewing its contract with the provider of the Nectar cards scheme, Loyalty Management Group. There are some amazing stats on the 'about us' section of the LMG website. Apparently, approximately 50% of all UK households participate in the programme, Nectar has given back over £800m worth of rewards to collectors, and - my favourite - nineteen Nectar cards are swiped every second of the day... continue reading on 10th April 2007 in For Your Information Comments (1)
- Stop chewing! I can't help but think of those particularly miserly teachers whose hatred of a pupil engaged in any form of mastication knew few bounds. The BBC reports that the trial to install CCTV cameras with speakers, which bark out admonitions to citizens engaging in particular forms of anti-social behaviour, is being extended to 20 more sites. continue reading on 4th April 2007 in For Your Information Comments (1)
- That was a party political broadcast... I’ve been following an interesting thread unpicked from the loud, often shapeless YouTube quilt. On March 5th a YouTube user called ParkRidge47 uploaded a video called Vote Different. It is a riff on Apple’s 1984 ad. There was some intrigue, however, over the question of who had made the explicitly partisan video... continue reading on 3rd April 2007 Comments (3)
- Friday rant returns...Falconer fibs: Ask me no questions, and you'll tell no lies There's a lot to the speech that Lord Falconer made on Wednesday evening. He was trying to pull off a tricksy act - talking on the one hand about how great freedom of information is, and on the other explaining why the government is going to change the rules to make it potentially easier for public bodies not to disclose information. It feels a bit like FIFA telling us that high-scoring football games are really great but from now on goalkeepers have to be at least 9ft tall with... continue reading on 23rd March 2007