When Chris & I spoke on Sunday evening about the emerging Cambridge Analytica story as we recorded WB40 I was confused. As further revelations have emerged through Carole Cadwalladr's fantastic and dogged reporting (which I have been following for months), I am reminded of the Morrissey lyric "I was happy in the haze of a … Continue reading A state of confusion
Category: Politics
Back in the early 1980s my then senior school, Bushey Hall, was faced with closure. The local education authority had proposed that the place should be shut, merged into another school a mile or so up the road. Parents and pupils fought the proposal. We organised. We created a petition, and got many thousands of … Continue reading Appocracy
I'm currently preparing a talk for a group of HR professionals on the subject of AI, machine learning and robots. My opening gambit is going to be that robots have already taken over our houses and have us enslaved. A strong pitch. What are these robots of which I speak? Well, you probably know them … Continue reading The everyday sexism of AI
And so the debate continues to rage about the UK's exit from the European Union. In the last 24 hours, the incomprehensibly complicated nature of the UK's constitutional structure has become illustrated with court rulings about the primacy of parliament in our set up. A judges' ruling on the rule of law gets painted as … Continue reading The European lobster pot
Whatever your views on Britain leaving the European Union, the country is certain now to be entering an extended period of negotiation with the EU and its member nations to unpick the UK from its forty-year relationship. In the past few weeks there has been a repeated claim from various government ministers that we shouldn't be … Continue reading Poker face
It's all change in Government technology circles. The various changes that have happened at the top of the Government Digital Service and elsewhere in recent days signify something, although I'm not entirely sure what. Derek du Preez makes a good stab of it here. All this change got me thinking. For a while now I've been … Continue reading Change leadership
I've never really identified myself as either English or British. Through a fluke of circumstance I happened to be born in Northern Ireland, to a mum & dad who each had one Irish and one Londoner parent. During my teenage years I thought of myself as in some way Irish. I identified with some of … Continue reading A Londoner. A European.
There was a short exchange between a Twitter account run by the CBI and Minister for the Digitals Matt Hancock MP last week that in less than 280 characters summed up my concerns for what appears to be currently going on in the UK government: https://twitter.com/MattHancockMP/status/697811253385895937 Now I know that it's probably unfair and unkind … Continue reading Technoration
I've spent the last couple of days mostly in the wonderful Names Not Numbers event in London, a festival of eclecticism that was timely given my recent thinking about the importance of diversity of thought. The final session I was able to attend yesterday was a debate about the impact of emergent technologies, and particularly the … Continue reading Technology doesn’t shape the future
Worried about your business being "Uberized"? Concerned that your services need to get more like AirBnB? Well, hope you've got deep pockets... There is a pernicious meme that is well established in business that relates that the Internet is basically free. In turn, it relates that technology using the Internet (and mobile too these days) … Continue reading Digital poster children
