Frictionless business part 2. Stop making sense
I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has an unspoken overarching agenda. It has been about creating the possibility of a world with less human interaction. This tendency is, I suspect, not a bug—it’s a feature. We might think Amazon was about making books available […]
Frictionless business part 1
There’s a new hot phrase in town and you’d better get used to it. Today we are going to look at what is being called ‘frictionless business’. And then, tomorrow, we will get the views of that titan of business, David Byrne of Talking Heads. Business is about getting things done – negotiating deals, exchanging […]
Obesity
When I saw the photograph I could scarcely believe it was the same country. A picture of Brighton beach in 1976, featured in the Guardian a few weeks ago, appeared to show an alien race. Almost everyone was slim. I mentioned it on social media, then went on holiday. When I returned, I found that […]
God bless America
We have looked at the pay of American CEOs before, but the current levels are drawing comment from everyone who fears for a future of dysfunction and inequality as $trillion companies pay the majority of their value to their leaders. ‘Let the market decide’ has been the mantra for decades. A new report from the […]
Death to creatvity
Today is the day thousands of 16-year-olds get their GCSE results in the UK. As they anticipate the new marking system, we already know that the number of children taking art at GCSE has fallen by 26% over the past five years. Plenty of the great and the good from the performing arts have criticised […]
A-Z of Brexit (part 2)
No dealNo deal is better than a bad deal, May keeps insisting nonsensically, but the problem goes deeper: if you call everything a “deal”, like Donald Trump, you imply that complex international negotiations are no harder than haggling over a carpet. A treaty, on the other hand, sounds like it would be a lot more […]
An A-Z of Brexit (part 1)
If you try to write an A-Z on any chosen topic, you are essentially on a hiding to nothing. It is too difficult to shoehorn items into some letters of the alphabet, but since Brexit is going to screw everything up, it should be one of the easiest to complete. So here goes: AnxietyThe syndrome […]
Some (more) AI predictions
We have published several articles about computers stealing our jobs; predictions are obviously difficult, particularly in digital technology, where the next big thing can appear from nowhere, but market-research firms all stick their necks out from time-to-time and guess on where the technology industry is headed. IDC, one of the biggest such research firms, was […]
Give me your money
Banks are shutting down cash machines and branches. They are forcing you to use their digital payments and digital banking infrastructure. Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal and financial institutions want everyone to access and navigate the day-to-day economy through their systems. They want to […]
Death of the high street. Part 64
The slow but steady demise of the high street is killing women’s jobs. 60% of retail workers are women. Working in retail once offered stability, flexible hours and decent holidays, now huge job losses are hitting female employees hardest. The British Retail Consortium identified in 2016 that nearly half a million people will be vulnerable […]
