Category: Current Affairs
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On keeping hope alive: living symbolically in a many-bodied world
Shared by a colleague a few days ago, and been on my mind since. Not sure if I fully buy the first part… but the Right definitely do, and – given that – it feels important that the rest of us make sure that the ground of ideas is kept fertile and well-sown with good…
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Frictionless: why free-flows of information are not doing us any good
“Recruitment… it’s just totally broken” This week I was at an event in Bournemouth visiting the excellent Spear project there, and the collaboration they were doing with a job agency, Pollen. One of the young people on the panel that formed part of the event is an advisor in a job centre, and she, and…
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Tech Bros as ‘Benefit Queens’
Very interesting piece here that’s resurfaced from 2022. In short – Elon and his super-wealthy tech bros are very often critical of federal government giving too many handouts – and employing too many in government roles – but are actually the biggest ‘benefit queens’ going, benefiting to the tune of billions support for their companies:…
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The Future of Work and Wellbeing
It’s been quiet around here, mostly because my energies have almost exclusively been focused delivering a conference and 180 page report for the closing of the Pissarides Review into the Future of Work and Wellbeing. This is a major, 3-year research project completed with multi-million funding from the Nuffield Foundation exploring how AI and automation…
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14 hallmarks of fascism
Excellent piece from back in 1996 in the New York Review of Books that came across my timeline this week – Umberto Eco on 14 hallmarks of fascism. Highly recommended read. They really are extraordinarily prescient. In summary: The question I’ve been asking myself is this: how does fascism end? Is war required? Or does…
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God-Like on BBC Talkback
Lovely to be invited onto William Crawley’s Talkback show on BBC Radio today. William has a PhD in philosophy, and was ordained too, and is an excellent presenter. The show was digging into the issues presented by the government’s announcement yesterday of the AI Action Plan. What I’ve been concerned about is that this plan…