Earlier this week, Jeremy Corbyn indulged in an extraordinary, and highly contradictory, rant. In a video uploaded to Twitter, the Labour leader accused the press of having gone “a bit James Bond” in their response to the allegations surrounding Corbyn’s visit to Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. In the last few days The Sun, The […]
At a February 2000 press conference, the first man to walk on the moon announced the National Academy of Engineering’s twenty most significant engineering achievements of the twentieth century. The aeroplane took third place; the automobile second; in first, the vast networks of electricity that power the developed world. None of the other nineteen would have […]
What are the real values of cyberspace? Some pundits have raised this question, mostly but not always by implication, in the wake of John Perry Barlow’s death on February 7. Barlow, a Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is frequently characterised as having been a Republican and/or a libertarian, although as I […]
Theresa May’s speech to the Munich Security Conference was a constructive effort at preserving security and defence ties with European partners after Brexit. Its seriousness was in stark contrast to her foreign secretary’s hollow Valentine’s Day posturing. The Prime Minister reiterated her desire for a swift and ambitious new security treaty, and hinted at flexibility […]
“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet” – the 2017 Conservative Party Manifesto. John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead songwriter turned tech-evangelist who died this week, was one of those people. In 1996, he wrote “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Barlow’s […]
That Elon Musk has stuck a used car up in the Van Allen belt is seen by those mature in the ways of business as a blindingly good piece of advertising. The rocket had to be tested and no one’s going to put anything valuable on the first shot of a new lifting platform, so […]
There is plenty for the City of London to be positive about. Despite Brexit and the recent volatility of financial markets, there are numerous opportunities for the City to reaffirm its status as the financial capital of the world. But there is no room for complacency and, as I argue in a new report for […]
At 2am on Sunday morning in Birmingham after a night out and an ill-advised kebab with friends, we decided to call it a night and head back to our friend’s house. So we did what countless other people do and ordered an Uber. We sat in the warmth and relative comfort of the kebab shop […]
Keeping your funds in cash is generally viewed as much safer than holding them in stocks. This is because, on any given day, the value of the US and UK capital stock – as measured by the NYSE and FTSE indices – can easily fluctuate by one or two percentage points either way. By contrast, […]
Universal Basic Income may just be the trendiest idea in politics. It’s also one of the most radical. Its advocates include Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and John McDonnell. From the joblessness that could arise from automation and machine learning to growing concern over income inequality, UBI’s cheerleaders claim the policy could solve some of the […]
One of the fundamental purposes of a patent is to align the legal property rights of patent-holders with their moral claims to ownership of their intellectual property. You have an intellectual property right because the intellectual property belongs to you. But there is a second basic purpose of a patent. The alternative to a patent […]
Early Facebook investor Roger McNamee has called for social media companies to be regulated in the same way as tobacco and alcohol. The justification for such action, he argues, is the risk of addiction and social media’s influence on public discourse and democracy. But are these fears warranted? Or is McNamee falling into a trap […]
Last Thursday Prime Minister Theresa May declared that action on digital currencies is necessary “precisely because of the way they are used, particularly by criminals”. While I would agree that a touch of sensible regulation is necessary for consumer confidence, the Prime Minister has fallen for the misconception that digital currencies are criminal. Indeed, if you ask the average person […]
For those worried about Facebook’s economic and political might, there appeared to be some good news this week. In its fourth-quarter earnings report, the company announced that its users are spending 50 million hours less, per day, on the social network. That is a five per cent fall in use. The number of daily users […]
Entering the Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition feels a bit like taking a glimpse into the future. The layout of the subterranean gallery at Kensington’s Design Museum resembles the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, with its grey winding corridor funnelling visitors past the exhibits. Rather than simply focusing on aesthetic design, the exhibition […]
The dominant political narrative surrounding inequality is one in which a powerful elite have rigged the rules of the game in their favour, lining their own pockets while the rest of us find it harder and harder to make ends meet. It was different versions of that message that gave Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s […]
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