Latest thinking

From a knowledge economy to a wisdom economy

Comment

03 Mar 2010

Our world is undergoing a series of convulsions. We don't know where they'll end up, or where any of us will be when the dust settles, if it ever does. Will we have a job? A pension? A home? Someone to care for us in old age?

What can we do to make classroom education more effective?

Comment

01 Mar 2010

Ask 20 people the question above, and you would probably get 20 different responses – and offered readily. It seems everyone is an expert when it comes to saying what is wrong with education, and what should be done about it. But there is hard evidence on one ubiquitous aspect of school life - classroom talk - which now makes a very strong case for talk to be given special attention by policymakers and practitioners.<!--more-->

Jaron Lanier: admirable apostate of the digital revolution

Comment

23 Feb 2010

For a society and, increasingly, a culture facilitated by digital networked tools, we have a surprisingly unsophisticated discourse about their impact, or about their aesthetics.

The problem with prisons

Comment

16 Feb 2010

The problem with prisons is Immanuel Kant. Increasing adherence to Kant’s principles by law professors, judges and legislators has driven up prison populations in both the US and the UK. Kant’s principles do not incorporate the empirically observed consequences of imprisonment; rather, they scorn such facts in favour of consistency of method. The result is that too many people are not in prison who should be, and far too many people are in prison who should not be.

RSA Animate - Superfreakonomics

Comment

02 Feb 2010

Are we really as altruistic as we might like to think? In the RSA's new animation series, we put into pictures Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's case for reevaluating the evidence.

Pause for political thought

Comment

27 Jan 2010

As anyone who follows current policy debates will know, public policy has become increasingly preoccupied with the terms of exchange between citizens and the state, service users and public services. Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives say they want to strengthen the bonds of civil society.  All are talking about the importance of voluntary activity, ‘co-production’ of public services, civic participation, and what Matthew Taylor calls ‘pro-social behaviour’.  It is a credit to the RSA that it is placed at the centre of this debate – and indeed often leads it.

Gaming: the real-world implications of an infectious pursuit

Comment

18 Jan 2010

Tom Chatfield

The spectrum of pursuits gathered today under the label ‘video games’ is a bewilderingly broad one: from games of chess played across continents on iPhones to high-resolution racing and combat simulations played on fifty-inch screens. At the top end of virtual experience, however, lie some of the most fascinating products the information age has yet conceived: massively multiplayer games, those virtual worlds where millions of players can play together within functioning virtual economies, vying for excellence, idling away a few hours in conversation, and everything in-between. This one genre holds within it a staggering human variety, and the capacity for the emergence of behaviours well beyond anything conceived of by the games’ creators. In this, it also offers a unique environment for studying many of the most ancient forms of human behaviour – collaboration, competition, work, play, friendship, fear, leadership – in an entirely new way.<!--more-->