Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Bill Clinton made a valid point: while terrorism could kill large numbers of people, it could never wipe out a civilisation, but that global warming could

I saw this on David Miliband’s blog, which has been challenging – the editorial (team?) takes an idea and chucks it out there – no commentary really. Miliband’s thinking is that the small steps matter such as non-incandescent light bulbs, energy efficiency discounts on council tax.

Blair’s view is different: technology should lead. Also that the solution lies in sorting out China and India, in that the UK is only 2% of the problem.

Some related articles that made me think today.

• Brainstorming causes hive mind. There is a theory that groups tend to dive off down extreme routes that a) don’t reflect the variety of opinion and b) that you only get the right solution if you ask people for ideas invididually, not collectively. This is covered in The Wisdom of Crowds.
• So maybe this method of getting people to self-organise for dinner shouldn’t replace our supra-anal checking and double-checking and working out who should go with who. Our method works very well, by the way.
• So instead, why not use a virtual innovation fund like this? I’m going to recommend it to ODPM for the Digital Challenge.

Lots of brain fodder there.

tvRSS is a neat looking TV torrent search and feed creator.