Category: World View

Fibre And Other Laws of Infrastructure
Last Sunday, I was fortunate enough to participate as a representative of NSRC at an event at the United Nations to mark the launch of the US State Department’s new Global Connect initiative. My co-panelists were Cathy Novelli, Toomas Henrik Ilves, Jakaya...

The Future of Open and How To Stop It
In 2008, Jonathan Zittrain wrote a book called The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It. In it he argued that the runaway success of the Internet is also the cause of it being undermined, that vested interests were in the process of...

Steve and TED’s Excellent Adventure
Have you ever found yourself at a party where you felt like if someone discovered who you really were, you would be ejected immediately? That’s a little bit how I’ve felt for the last six months or so since my...

The Morality of Openness
I feel like my moral compass is broken. Like many things that break, I put the first aberrations down to anomalies, exceptions that prove the rule. But just as a real compass doesn’t point to true north but to a...

Google, Facebook, and frickin’ Laser Beams
I have such a complicated relationship with Google and Facebook that I sometimes find it hard to write about them. I don’t mean complicated in the sense of conflict of interest although it is true that one of the organisations...