Generation Gap
One evening in Burgundy…
Semur-en-Auxois one lovely summer evening.
HMG wakes up to the potential of blockchain technology
This morning’s Observer column:
There are not many occasions when one can give an unqualified thumbs-up to something the government does, but this is one such occasion. Last week, Sir Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser, published a report with the forbidding title Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Block Chain. The report sets out the findings of an official study that explores how the aforementioned technology “can revolutionise services, both in government and the private sector”. Since this is the kind of talk one normally hears from loopy startup founders pitching to venture capitalists rather than from sober Whitehall mandarins, it made this columnist choke on his muesli – especially given that, in so far as Joe Public thinks about distributed ledgers at all, it is in the context of Bitcoin, money laundering and online drug dealing. So what, one is tempted to ask, has the chief scientific adviser been smoking?
Quote of the Day
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
Herbert Simon
Hawkeye and friend
Botanical Garden, Cambridge, late last year.
Quote of the Day
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
Isaac Asimov
They’re Democrats, Hilary, but not as you know them…
This morning’s Observer column:
Good news for Hillary Clinton: there are very few Republican voters in Silicon Valley. Bad news: the Democrats there are not Democrats as you know them. They detest trade unions, for example, and they’re very keen on immigration – so long as the immigrants have PhDs from elite Indian or Chinese universities. They are in favour of government, so long as it’s “smart” government. And they believe that all change is good – especially in the long term.
We know this courtesy of a fascinating piece of opinion polling by Gregory Ferenstein, the guy who runs TechCrunch’s policy channel…
Ad nauseam
Now here’s an interesting idea — a browser plug-in that silently clicks on every ad that appears on a web-page, thereby swamping — and confusing — the trackers, who have to make sense of what they’re getting back.
Quote of the Day
“The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions”.
Paul Samuelson, writing 50 years ago, quoted by Larry Summers in yesterday’s Financial Times.