The idea that the globalising wave of the last quarter of a century was mostly built on cheap energy and easy money is one that we’re now getting the opportunity to test. So far, the hypothesis is holding up. In particular, according to a story in this week’s Daily Telegraph, high energy costs seem to [...]
I contributed last week to an event in London which was designed to imagine how the notion of the museum might change. The current model, which is about 150 years old, basically consists of a building with some stuff in it, arranged according to some organising principle. It is changing already in the face of [...]
I visited the recently refurbished Royal Observatory at Greenwich last weekend, where there is, inevitably, a whole section devoted to Harrison and his clock-based solution to the ‘longitude problem’. (The story of his fight with the Astronomer Royal, Neville Maskelyne, and the astronomy establishment, which preferred the so-called ‘lunar solution’, is famouly told by Dava [...]
I’ve been reading Keith Roberts’ 1960s SF novel Pavane, set in a modern England in which Elizabeth I had been assassinated in 1588, the Spanish Armada had succeeded, and the Catholic Church had triumphed - in England and in the rest of northern Europe. At the start of the novel, the grip of the [...]
I’ve been reading Watt’s Perfect Engine, by Ben Marsden, which I suppose can be described as the biography of an invention. Even allowing for the fact that it’s written from a modern perspective, it’s striking how many of the lessons resonate with contemporary innovation.
I blogged at the start of the month on Martin Jacques’ observation on the extent to which China was now more significant than the US in the politics of Asia in all aspects other than military. Since then, I’ve noticed a post on the IFTF blog which argued that as China and India become the [...]
I’ve just noticed an interesting article on the recently re-launched ‘History & Policy‘ site which suggests - by looking at the historical evidence - that our chances of reducing energy consumption without sanctions or limits being imposed is, frankly, wishful thinking. Even though we have in the past achieved the energy efficiency gains needed now [...]
If you’re interested in how the future is portrayed in the past - or in transport - this is certainly worth nine minutes of your time. From 1958, a section of a Disney show on the future of transportati0n. Or, as it turns out, the future of highways and cars.
The magazine Resurgence has a special edition to mark the 60th anniversay of Gandhi’s death in 1948. On the inside front page it includes a note written by Gandhi to his grandson, Arun, a few weeks before his assination, on the ’seven blunders’ which promote violence. It seems as a good a way as any [...]
For a number of reasons I’ve been thinking about long-term futures recently - beyond the 50-year mark and out to 100 years or more. So I pricked up my ears when I was at a concert and heard a singer, while introducing a song about the poet John Clare, talk about the ’seventh generation’.
