The Battle of Ideas festival (#BattleFest), organised by the Academy of Ideas, takes place at Church House Westminster over the weekend of 17–18 October. (There are also a number of satellite events taking place around the UK, and the rest of Europe, both before and after the conference.) Useful tools for the Battle of Ideas festival 2026 Festival …
Essay in Five Critical Essays on Growth
My essay in the pamphlet Five Critical Essays on Growth, edited by Austin Williams of the Future Cities Project, has just been published (read it on Spy). The other contributors are Phil Mullan (@Phil_Mullan) Charlie Winstanley (@cfwinstanley) Mark Iddon (@Mark_Iddon) and Shiv Malik (@shivmalik). Foreword by Austin Williams (@Future_Cities) [ed.] and afterword by Patrik …
Informal, self-organised global learning works!
Informal, self-organised global learning works! I have helped organise a group of 10 autodidacts in Progress Studies for a weekly 2-hour online seminar on ‘21st Century Civilization’, taking place over 11 weeks, covering subjects from Civilizational Decay to The Psychology of Modern Elites. For each seminar, we read and prepare; sharing notes in advance; ask …
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30 years at the spy.co.uk domain
Three decades ago, I registered the domain spy.co.uk and started sending and receiving email at [email protected] About a year earlier had acquired a mobile phone, on Orange, the upstart and consumer-focused telco created by Hutchison. The development of the domain name system, on top of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), Ethernet and other data transport …
Guide to reviewing non-fiction books
For my Introduction to Global Entrepreneurship course at Accent Global Learning I have set my students an assignment to review a book on our long reading list. I would value colleagues’ thoughts on my rationale for a book review and description of approaches to this activity. This is not an easy exercise, though it is easier than …