• Technology or Politics?

    Earlier this week, Janan Ganesh wrote in the FT that contrary to the dominant current ‘discourse’, in fact, “public life, not private innovation, has supplied the drama of our times”. In his view, even the tech elite recognise that ultimately … Continued

  • Cultures of Innovation and Creative Destruction

    Since this week’s Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences was awarded “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” it seemed the obvious choice as the subject for this week’s blog. The prize was split equally for contributions to endogenous growth … Continued

  • Is there an AI Winter coming?

    Until very recently, the hype (and genuine expectations) over generative AI had reached almost fever pitch. NVIDIA, probably the clearest bellwether indicator of AI bullishness, has seen its stock price rise 16-fold over the past three years (Oct 2022-25) and … Continued

  • Can Geoengineering be a Plan B (or C or Z) for Climate?

    The recent climate summit in Baku has been deemed a failure by many and coupled with our recent crossing the 1.5C temperature target laid out in the Paris Agreement has amplified concerns that we won’t be able to cut greenhouse … Continued

  • Assisted Dying as a Policy Problem

    There has been a heated debate in the UK over assisted dying and there is a free vote planned in Parliament for the end of next week (i.e., there is no party whip and individual Members of Parliament can vote … Continued

  • Social media tipping points

    In just the past day or so, Bluesky has reached 15 million followers having doubled its user base in the past 90 days including over 1 million in the past week alone. The proximate cause for the shift is related … Continued