2020 has, at first glance, not been a vintage year for social interaction. Covid-19 thrives on the social contact on which humans depend, so it has had to be throttled. Our economies depend on the gathering of people too, and not just because of the size of the leisure and…

How an understanding of Covid Cosmologies puts people at the heart of Bindle — Buckle Up The seatbelt was patented in 1885 yet it was only in 1966 that car manufacturers were required to fit them in vehicles. It took another 30 years for every US State (bar New Hampshire) to enforce their use. In the decades between arrival and their use becoming mandatory few people…

At this point we’re well into the Covid-19 remote work experiment. The result? From the looks of it, working remotely has, well, worked. Many companies in tech and knowledge work have quickly adopted standard policies allowing for more flexible ways of working. Twitter, Facebook and many others have adopted long-term…

9000 days It was 25 years ago today that Microsoft launched Window 95. Tim Berners-Lee’s invention at CERN may have pre-dated that launch by six years but it was Bill Gates who kick-started the era of the household PC and led families to take their first, tentative steps towards an online world…

It has been often said that technology, particularly emerging technologies such as AI, will be inhibited by a lack of public trust. As one example, Roger Taylor, the chair of the UK’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, stated that low levels of trust are a barrier to the effective…

As lockdowns around the globe are beginning to ease, many are asking what the ‘new normal’ will look like. Views vary, but what they all have in common is that the old normal cannot coexist with the new world. In this piece, I look at how norms across societies are…

Drowning amongst the many often excellent pieces about the new normal, how to think about pandemics and what this means for business it was only last week that a certain melancholy enveloped me. Compared with very many people my lockdown has been good. I’ve little to complain about. The business…

“My brother! My brother! […] When has any such thing been even heard or seen; in what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth?”¹ …

Remote ethnography are two words you might not expect to see side by side. Typically ethnographic research involves travelling to a field site and meeting participants in person. …