I was chasing up some information about KU Leuven, the oldest Catholic university in Europe and the site of a major EU/US meeting on tech and trade. In the process, I came across this description of the Beguines in the Belgian city of Leuven. Communities of beguines formed at the end of the 12th century . […]
Why I care about a moonshot for care
I love the idea of moonshots. There is something stirring and hopeful in the conception of setting a venture for change or accomplishment whose virtue lies primarily in its scale and boldness. Mariana Mazzucato has taken the idea as far as anyone including in her latest book. In her framing, moonshots are not just big […]
Artificial intelligence: a registry of power
I am reading Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford, partly because of an interest in all things digital (and the AI ‘thing’ is hot and hotter) and partly because I am a member of the NSW Government’s AI Advisory Committee. The book is a powerful thesis from a significant thinker and practitioner that suggests a […]
Why is is so hard to do what we know? Or what happens when I’ve hit the wall
There’s a lot of movement at the moment around questions of rebuilding after COVID (assuming there is an ‘after COVID’; I think this is with us for a while) especially in what is sometimes referred to as the “foundation economy” (health, social care, education, food – what Sydney University’s John Buchanan recently described as the […]
Reflections on government and COVID19: expertise, the role of government, the new public work, social imagination and beating the binary #3
8 In my work in the public sector over the last 20 years or more, one of the most familiar tropes is the exasperated crusade so many engage in to find better ways to collaborate within and across governments and between governments and the wider community. The trouble is that aspiration and hope seem to […]
Reflections on government and COVID19: expertise, the role of government, the new public work, social imagination and beating the binary #2
5 Public work is work that results in solutions and services that are available and accessible to all, are usually paid for by some form of collective investment and effort and which are accountable and ethical in ways that everyone can easily see and understand. They are common, collective, legible and provide benefits that can […]
