Screens and social media addictions are changing, perhaps irreparably damaging our brains. It’s a view often associated with Susan Greenfield, the British peer, scientist and brain expert who, as I recall at one lecture I heard her give, pits “people of the book” against “people of the screen”. Shorter attention spans, an unwillingness or incapability […]
Time to elect a new people (or using technologies of expertise to make democracy more democratic)
There’s a poem, The Solution, by Bertolt Brecht that goes something like this: After the uprising of the 17th June The Secretary of the Writers Union Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the government And could win it back only By redoubled efforts. Would it not […]
The centre cannot hold (or why public purpose is a social muscle)
What is going on? Donald Trump is going to win the Republican nomination and might become the next President of the United States. Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian senator from nowhere is testing Hillary Clinton to the limit, and perhaps beyond and, in the process, garnering small armies of support from young and old. In the […]
