Thoughts and wanderings around the internet, e-government and geekdom.
Two nice representations of the world that was and the world that will be:
Lots of interesting themes from Maister:
Two items that echo Hutton’s thinking on how (non-)rational we are:
And two others with lessons from life:
Useful one-pager on how to customise Excel through startup worksheets/workbooks.
Who knew that we had the lowest level of representation in the western world? That’s in terms of electors per councillor. But France at 1:116 seems astonishingly small. I guess 1:2600 is too large for my voice to be heard. But my ward has 10,000 people and three councillors, so maybe that feels more sensible?
See, it’s not dead, just becoming an adolescent. Which is why you’d rather it wasn’t around the house any more. Interesting review from Mather, but 95% central government focused. Even though take up is still low among citizens, local authorities have used web portals and technologies to start to sort out their internal communications issues. This has been a massive change, although pretty invisible to date.
For you football plus Palm-owners out there, here’s the application you need. Except that it restarts my Treo on run. C’est la vie, no?
Crowdsourcing is a nice new word for businesses like iStockphoto and Slivers of Time, where large numbers of people can make money in a “small” way. I think there will be a lot of similar businesses taking off based around hobbies (like photography). I’m sure people have already done them around video and around music, so what next?
I love Scott Adams’ mind. It comes over Aspergers-ish, which is probably why. Today’s blog is a classic: how should science try to eliminate religion? We know lots of the psychological tricks they use and that we could use, so why not try them?
Always interesting to look at the state of the consulting industry. Healthy for employees, tricky on the profit margins, I think. Which means that it will get tricky for employees pretty soon.
Even Accenture is at it, saying that
the next wave of “leading†government agencies will deliver customer
service that builds an implicit trust between citizens and their
government that goes beyond citizen satisfaction. The report also found
that government agencies are creating increasingly local citizen touch
points
Sounds about right. But then again, do we trust the banks any more now we can self serve? Not really. The critical thing is allowing feedback, listening to it and then acting on it. CF Mini-microsoft, which appears to have been a source of change within MS.
At the end of this rant about the imprortance of numbers (I think he’s right, just it’s ranty), Mather has a quote from number 10:
The plural of anecdote is not data
I had heard it differently, and I’m not sure which I prefer:
Data is the antidote to the anecdote
You have to love an article called Japanese War Tubas. But I don’t think it is bad science. Surely its excellent science, just superseded?
local e-Government has now gone to Angela Smith. So it isn’t dead! Or is it?
The first entirely unguided heart surgery has been carried out by a robot. I find this spooky and slightly unnerving. Not sure why, because it is obviously the future.
A thought-provoking essay from Fukuyama on critiques of his The End of History. My summary of his position: liberty and equality are evolution-driven goals in considerable tension. While Hegel thought the unfolding of reason would lead to communist utopia, events lead Fukuyama to suggest that it leads instead to modern liberal democracy (contrast the number of people who chose to live in communes with those who choose to live in LA).
My 2c - why should liberal democracy in 20 years look anything like it does today? What about “Culture”-style voting on everything because we’re all hooked into the net? What about local areas of influence rather than strict administrative boundaries?
He discusses four challenges to the delightful prospect outlined:
Islam - but surely Christianity was used to justify slavery, so why should Islam have a problem with liberal democracy?
Democracy - can it transcend the nation-state? Could a United Nations with teeth work across the world?
Authority - politics must drive economic development; you cannot just expose a country to the world economy and expect it to improve. Just examine Africa.
Technology - Fukuyama talks more about how changing ourselves might affect the future, rather than climate change or armageddon.
Contrast with Orhan Pamuk on Turkey, being drawn to politics through direct experience of injustice. And George Monbiot on the West’s hypocrisy over renationalisation of oil assets (you’re thinking Bolivia, but Chad did the same). And Max Hastings on how rubbish New Labour has been in terms of policy execution (while its politics has been excellent).
Demos asks which you are in terms of the future direction for public services. Hmm. I agree with bits of all three positions
Amazing that medical science is reduced to finding potentially critical antibiotics in soil samples from around the world. What ever happened to designing drugs for specific purposes?
According to LeapFish, raggett.net is worth somewhere between $432 and $31,000. Somehow I don’t think so.
Like the old Edwardian tiles on the tubes? Not as much as Doug does. Some great stuff on why they are there, why it was an extraordinary undertaking and why there are not many of them left, and some lovely maps of the patterns.
Hamachi is genius. Install a simple client on Windows or Mac and you have a VPN that is transparent.
As an example, I can now browse my Mac mini hard drive at work through a normal explorer window. Other uses? Well why not do VNC over the Hamachi network instead of over the internet. That means that I don’t have to open my VNC ports on the my router, reducing risk.
It appears to be secure, but is definitely for confident geeks, not man in the street.
Initial thought is that the quality is terrible streaming through iTunes, but it does work. Maybe some other apps would be better?
I started investigating all this here.
[NB the post used to have Hamchi as the title. Random misspelling meant I got some traffic. Now corrected]
