
Innovation
Can design cut crime?
Government attempts to ‘design out’ crime by sticking anti-theft, noise-emitting devices around the country will make us feel less secure.
Gordon Brown and the ghosts of innovation
James Heartfield reports from yesterday’s NESTA conference in London on the flailing PM’s vampiric relationship with the ‘innovation economy’.
To see the future of the internet, look East
If Westerners could shake off their prejudices about ‘copycat’ Asians with ‘small hands’, they might just see the wonders of Asian web innovation.
Innovation in a time of caution
The live launch of the spiked/Pfizer survey ‘What is the Greatest Innovation?’ took a critical look at the i-word - that buzzword of our age.
Take a PEW, hear a sermon
With three new tracts on planning, energy and waste, the government shows it would rather change our habits than encourage innovation.
Must-reads from the past week
The tyranny of technology
Promoting healthy eating, tackling truancy, improving 'social inclusion': the great potential of IT is being used for instrumental political ends.
This month: Grumpiness
What's behind the fashion for labelling cultural critics who are dissatisfied with the present (such as himself) as ‘grumpy old men’?
Just another brick in the wall?
Lynsey Hanley’s book Estates: An Intimate History titillates the Guardian-reading class’s fascination with a poor and excluded ‘underclass’.
Is Wikipedia part of a new ‘global brain’?
Everyone from Time to TV networks is singing the praises of user-generated ‘people’s content’ on the worldwide web. But is it reliable?
Transport innovation: slowing to a standstill
New Labour’s deep-seated hostility to popular mobility is holding back advances on roads, railways and in the air.