RSA Comment



Archive for April, 2011

The Economics of Enough

Mon 18th Apr 201110 Comments »

The financial crisis and concerns about environmental sustainability have led to some to conclude that economies should no longer strive for growth. Diane Coyle, FRSA and author of The Economics of Enough, argues this conclusion is misplaced.

The economy faces several kinds of problem, each of which seems depressingly intractable. They include climate change, the government debt and aftermath of the financial crisis, and social inequality for starters. Taking them together, the challenge of devising economic policies can look daunting. So it is not surprising that simple solutions look appealing.

One apparent solution that has been gaining momentum is that the economy needs to give up on growth. That would certainly help in terms of environmental pressures. It is also widely believed that GDP growth doesn’t make us any happier, so why not concentrate on happiness or ‘well-being’ instead?

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Attention! Putting the form in information

Thu 14th Apr 20116 Comments »

James Gleick visited the RSA this week to promote his new book The Information: A History, A Theory, a Flood. Jonathan Rowson shares his thoughts of the event, which you can listen to.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

TS Eliot, The Rock 1934

Gleick’s book explores the very idea of information, its role in communication, how it began to be broken up into ‘bits’, how it differs from data, and when and how it becomes meaningful. The book also deals with the impact of the telegraph, the printing press, and the internet. (more…)

Can Free Schools Work?

Fri 8th Apr 20113 Comments »

The challenges that face free schools can be overcome by learning from experiences elsewhere argue Loic Menzies FRSA and Laura McInerney. They set out the six predictable failures of free schools and how to avoid some of them.

In Beyond Beveridge, the Commission on 2020 Public Services based at the RSA outlined three shifts in public services that were needed: first, a shift in culture, from social security to social productivity; second in power, from the centre to citizens and, finally, a shift reconnecting financing with the purposes of public services.  The government’s flagship policy of Free Schools might seem an exemplification of these principles. However, our recent short book The Six Predictable Failures of Free Schools… and how to avoid them suggests that these changes will not be without difficulties.

We published the report in response to over 300 applications for Free School status being submitted to the Department of Education. This level of interest surprised many who had argued that people would have no interest in joining the coalition’s Big Society. However, my colleague Laura McInerney and I were concerned that many potential founders lacked an understanding of the difficulties they might encounter. This is not for lack of available information; the American academic Seymour Sarason spent decades studying the US equivalent of Free Schools (Charter Schools). He sought to understand why a third of these schools underperformed compared to those they were set up to surpass and why another 40% merely matched existing schools’ performance.

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The End of Remembering?

Wed 6th Apr 20116 Comments »

RSA Comment tries to link readers to some of the events the Society is hosting so we can broaden audiences and continue the debate. Jonathan Rowson kicks off with Joshua Foer’s exploration of the nature of memory. Jonathan spoke at the RSA Wednesday 6 April. Find out more about the event.

One of my favourite song lyrics is from U2’s ‘Dirty Day’: “You can’t even remember what I’m trying to forget.” It might have been Bono’s sonorous voice, maybe the melody, or perhaps the electric guitar that follows this line that lodged it in my memory, but I like to think it stayed with me for deeper reasons.

The lyric highlights the enormous complexity and occasional absurdity of memory, reveals that remembering is often an active rather than passive process, and hints at the role memory plays in our identities and our social lives.

Visiting the RSA this week, Joshua Foer, a freelance science journalist and US Memory Champion, discussed The End of Remembering and his recent book Moonwalking with Einstein.

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