The Obvious?

Feeling my age

When I did Russian transmissions from Studio S39 at Bush House it looked like this:

It now looks like this:

Thanks to Giles and Roger for the memories!

Education 2.0

Richard Sambrook posted this:

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, made a really good point at  the Clinton Global Initiative:

He said the current education system of grades and exams puts people in competition with each other and is a top down command-and-control model. As the leader of one of the world's biggest IT companies he believes future education should concentrate on networking and collaboration - which will support greater innovation and corss-discipline creativity. It will also, he said, attract talent. Call it Education 2.0 then...

This is why I have been getting involved with The Open University, Horsesmouth and School Of Everything. I reckon it matters.

School Of Everthing

School Of Everything has just launched in alpha. The idea behind the site is that we all have something to learn and something we can teach and the internet gives us the potential to connect teachers with pupils. It is early days but have a look and let the guys know what you think

Touchy feely

I touched an iPod Touch the other day, in the absence of an iPhone which isn't in the UK yet, and it changed my life.

Overstatement? Maybe.

I picked it up, was surfing the web in seconds using Safari and wifi, and using the zoom with two fingers action, and the elastic scrolling movement, was suddenly flying over web pages like something out of Lord Of The Rings.

What in a conventional interface seems static, owned, managed and grown up, felt malleable, playful - almost sexy.

OK they are expensive now, but imagine this potential in the hands of someone in a third world country without a firewall managed by IT Fascists ....

Business information may never be the same again.

Support the Monks' protest in Burma

This Facebook group has 66,000 members - it should have more.

Facebook | Support the Monks' protest in Burma

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That'll be me then ....

The people who take to GTD are the most organized people," Allen says, "but they self-assess as the least organized, because they are well-enough organized to know that they are fucking up.

from Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency

Power, evil and the web

While traveling through the German countryside recently I found myself yet again marveling at the way otherwise decent innocent people allowed themselves to fall under the spell of a much smaller group of deluded and evil individuals and allow inconceivable atrocities to take place.

As I watch the images of current events in Burma I find myself wondering the same thing.

At the same time I am being asked to support a large change programme in a major corporate which would mean easing power away from those who currently have it.

What is it about power that makes people give it away to others? No one has power over us unless at one level we give it to them. Once we have given it to them how do we get it back without being as bad as them? What, if anything, has the web to teach us about how we exercise our rights and responsibilities and how can we use this experience to make the abuse of power less likely or to make the re-distirbution of it more even.

FCO Bloggers

FCO Bloggers: Global conversations

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Great stuff from the BBC

I watched The Protestant Revolution last night and was reminded yet again that BBC Four is possibly the best that TV gets. At the other end of my spectrum of favourite BBC programmes is The Chuckle Brothers who  have been going for 20 years! . My kids are frequently embarrassed by how much I laugh at them!

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David Miliband about to start blogging again.

The Foreign Office is poised to launch a surprisingly ambitious blogging initiative, featuring not just one but as many as six blogs - from the very top to the very bottom of the organisation. 

via Simon Dickson

Though I am not sure about Simon's refence to me as a "usual egov suspect", it is nice to hear that I apparently survive as a link on Milliband's sidebar. I am glad David is getting back into blogging as his Defra blog was a good effort and felt like a real blog by a real person. Arguably his position as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is going to make it tougher to continue the openness we've seen so far but who knows. It will also be interesting to see how the others in his department who are about to start blogging get on. Fascinating.

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