This is the 10 February 2025 FT Swamp Notes from Rana Foroohar and Richard Waters. [The Notes is a great @financialtimes newsletter to which I strongly recommend you sign up if you haven’t already]. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in the torrent of analysis and speculation about exactly what the Trump/Musk […]
“We are as gods and might as well get used to it.”
I’ve borrowed the title for this blog from a recent review article from Foreign Affairs. It references Stewart Brand’s introduction to the first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, “an encyclopedic compendium of resources for back-to-the-land living that became a foundational document of Silicon Valley’s techno-utopian culture.” This wonderful review essay is built around a […]
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 […]
What is government for?
This is the 19 July email from US historian Heather Cox Richardson, part of a free “letter from an American historian” to which you can subscribe here. If you want to join the comments discussion it will cost you $5 a month. Richardson is a Professor of History at Boston College. Her emails, to which […]
The New Orthodoxy
Why we need a critical review of digital transformation of government and the public sector in Australia to support human flourishing through sustainable and shared prosperity. Australia needs a critical review of 20 years of digital transformation of government and the public sector to provide an honest and tough-minded critique of what’s been done and […]
Digital transformation strategy 2.0
This is a short submission (copied in full below) I made to the current rewrite of Australia’s digital strategy being curated by the Digital Transformation Agency. Its main message is that digital transformation needs to think bigger and take itself more seriously. No disrespect to the complex and difficult technical, often transactional work that is […]
