Technical Intuition: Instincts in a Digital World. I like technical intuition as a term, and a concept. That sums up the sort of awareness that I've been trying to bring into my local community, but now gives me a name for it.
The free speech panic: how the right concocted a crisis"When Thatcher and Reagan came to power, they promised that the free market would reward individual effort and responsibility, delivering upward mobility and property ownership to those who were willing to work for them. After more than a decade of stagnant real wages and spiralling housing costs, not even conservatives dare suggest that contract survives [...] short of acting as the servants of the super-rich, what is the point of conservatism today?"
Interesting Things on the Internet: July 23rd 2018
Offscreen Magazine interviews Tom Loosemore. Lots of interesting insight into civic tech and the possibilities of a better digital Government. " if you’re making software, you are actively reshaping power dynamics between citizens, consumers, companies, and governments. Shifting power relationships is politics. If you are in software, you are in politics."
Open Letter: Culture for Sale. Turns out property developers don't care about culture, artists, or generally the people they're profiting from. Who knew?! We need better tactics than open letters and panel discussions if we're going to find a better alternative to gentrification.
The Hidden Cost of Touchscreens. Hopefully we can start to recognise that there's value in tactile, no-need-to-look interfaces.
After the Fall. John Lanchester on fine form about the decade since the financial crash and how life has gotten worse for not the people who caused it. "How it’s been working out here in the UK is the longest period of declining real incomes in recorded economic history. ‘Recorded economic history’ means as far back as current techniques can reach, which is back to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Worse than the decades that followed the Napoleonic Wars, worse than the crises that followed them, worse than the financial crises that inspired Marx, worse than the Depression, worse than both world wars."
5 July 1948: A chance and a challenge. Matt lays out a vision for the NHS that I heartily endorse. Turns out it's roughly the same one it started with.
Complicating the Narratives. Complexity and nuance in our writing could provide some of the answer to how we can de-polarise the national debate. That's why I like blogging over Twitter (et al) - it encourages longer, more thought-through pieces (when they're not snippets like most of my blogging here of late...)