The Big Idea: Rick Hall FRSA is lighting sparks all over the shop!
The Big Idea: to develop creative free spaces for young people to be inspired and educated by science, technology, engineering and maths.
3-2-1-Ignition* is a new type of shop. Not one where you go to buy things from but one that you go to acquire knowledge, inspiration and enjoyment. Led by Rick Hall FRSA and Ignite! a science pop up shop was created to enhance curiosity amongst the people of Nottingham. Although Nottingham has been designated a ‘Science City’, research showed Rick that young people and their parents did not see science, technology, engineering and maths as careers paths for the future. (STEM for short; just like the RSA it’s a bit of a mouthful).
I first met Rick Hall briefly at the East Midlands Annual Conference before I was an RSA staff member, talk about keen! We did not meet again until I popped into the shop prior to its grand opening. Rick was conducting an evaluation with the design and build volunteers. He was full of energy and enthusiasm and could not wait to open the shop. It wasn’t long before I was 
helping try to solve the mystery of the multiple light switches. Rick is a writer and consultant in the arts, education, creativity and youth sectors. He has a passion for developing partnerships that promote creativity and learning for young people. Through Rick’s hard work at Ignite! 25 organisations gave their support to 3-2-1-Ignition* Rick also persuaded a panel of Fellows that 3-2-1-Ignition* was also worth support from the Catalyst scheme which helped to make the project a reality. Critical to its success was the work of a wide range of volunteers. Students from Nottingham Trent University helped design and curate the shop in just 8 days turning it from an empty shell into a wonderful den of curiosity. You can watch the transformation of the shop via a selection of videos by Hasmita Chavada. Volunteers also spent time on the streets of Nottingham doing stints of science busking where they played drying racks and made marmite turn white! Young people who run Lab_13’s in their schools also came to use the space and inspire others. By partnering with Nottingham Hackspace the shop attracted 250 young people who soldered, drilled, made and even got to play Pong powered by a bicycle. There were also opportunities to connect to the British Geological Survey and the Royal Society of Chemistry – the list goes on.
Over 3300 people visited the 3-2-1-Ignition* and didn’t pay a penny to do so. 100% of young people surveyed asked for the shop to remain open longer. Not willing to disappoint the public they listened to their audience and stayed open for a further 2 weeks meaning the shop was open for 27 days. Its aim was to inspire, teach and entertain people from all walks of life about STEM and to show young people that you can go into STEM careers and be creative.
Next Steps
Following from 3-2-1-Ignition* in the Broadmarsh shopping centre in Nottingham the team had to decide what to do next. They have produced an evaluation of the project that will tell you all about the activities, projects and partners but more importantly they are moving ahead spurred on by comments from participants who said ‘It’s the funnest place on earth’ ‘I was enthused and enthralled to see how much my grandchildren, boys aged 8 + 11, responded to interactive displays, They loved it all.’ They will be taking the concept south of the Watford Gap to the Barbican’s Festival of Neurosciences Weekender and the Wonders Street Fair on the 2 – 3 March & 7 – 9 April. Go take a look and ‘tempt your curiosity and your mind to do some making. There’ll be jars to peer at and sniff, thoughts to create and space to ask the brain-related questions you’ve always wanted to know’. It’s all about doing, touching and getting involved.
How Can You Help?
Rick and Ignite! have also been busy exploring how Ignite! can develop the 3-2-1-Ignition* model further. As Rick says they have a ‘proof of concept for programmes like Lab_13 and the 3-2-1-Ignition* pop up shop, but lack the resources and know how to convert these successes to wider adoption.’ Is this something you can help with? The one-off travelling sparks of 3-2-1-Ignition* will be tested at the Barbican events but they won’t be able to attract such an audience and will not reach as wide a demographic as they did in the Broadmarsh. They are considering setting up a 3-2-1-Ignition* Hub in Nottingham and could use similar models used by Pirate Supply Store of 826 Valencia a US creative writing project and Hoxton Street Monster Supplies that supports the Ministry of Stories. One of Rick’s grand plans is to support Leeds to be free of NEET (Not in education, employment or training) young people by 2020, an idea that can only be done in collaboration.
One thing is for sure Rick will be busy making plans and talking to people so if you are interested in this agenda and think you could help please be in touch. You can contact Rick at: rick@ignitefutures.org.uk or follow him on twitter where he is @Rick_Hall
Is social networking redefining identity?
When did you last send a tweet? What did your Facebook friends have to say about how they’re feeling this morning? How important are online networks to your sense of who you are? Chances are you’ll have something to say about at least one of these questions. For a majority of Britons, online persona and virtual networks are becoming increasingly definitional.
Monday saw the publication of a new report that looks at the impact of technology on identity, by the Government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor Sir John Beddington. The report, The Future of Identity, identifies ‘hyper-connectivity’ – near-continuous access to the Internet – as a very significant development. Beddington argues that hyper-connectivity is likely to have a profound effect on how people regard their place in the world and define themselves.
The report suggests that the ubiquity of smartphones is changing the way we relate to others, and may lead to place-based communities becoming less cohesive. In tandem, hyper-connectivity enables greater connectivity between otherwise disparate groups, making it very easy for groups to organise themselves quickly.
The Telegraph, reporting the publication of Beddington’s report, emphasises the risk that the rise of social networking may “fuel social unrest”. The role of smartphone technology in the riots of 2011 was well documented, and it’s clear that these communication platforms offer the means to facilitate phenomena like rioting, protesting and social disturbance.
But is it really accurate to say that hyper-connectivity can in itself be a cause of social unrest? I’m not convinced that these developments in technology are responsible for bringing about the motivation or impetus for groups of young people to loot and riot across the UK’s cities. Sure, they provide the communication platform to make it easy for large groups to organise themselves, but why should the existence of such technology be a trigger?
the perpetual presence of the smartphone impacts on our patterns of attention – we’re always on ‘standby’, ready to be interrupted
Having said that, it occurs to me that there are other ways in which in hyper-connectivity is likely to impact on us, as individuals and as a society. I’m sure the perpetual presence of the smartphone impacts on our patterns of attention – we’re always on ‘standby’, ready to be interrupted. As Jonathan Rowson noted in this blog, connectivity comes at a cost, undermining deeper connections that are all too easy to take for granted. Whether or not we’re aware of it, the reality is that many of us are addicted to receiving new information – the kick we get out of receiving new emails, SMS, and reading the latest Twitter feed is unrivalled by face to face interactions. Comparing ourselves to others is an inevitable side effect of online social networking, and this can have hugely negative consequences for self-esteem and assumptions about what is ‘normal’.
All of this must be affecting our brains somehow, whether the impact is on our patterns of concentration, expectations for instant information, or ability to focus our attention deeply. What we pay attention to can have a profound effect on our overall outlook, as Nathalie Spencer discusses here. Hyper-connectivity must also impact on our inner life – how comfortable would you be to spend half an hour doing nothing, without a Smartphone to engage with? What would it mean for your sense of self if all your online presence were to be erased?
Beddington’s report suggests that in the future, it is very likely that someone with no online persona will be regarded as unusual or even suspicious. This seems to indicate that the blurring of the boundary between online and offline identity is set to intensify. All of this makes me think that we may need to force ourselves to disconnect, unplug, and make space to notice and appreciate our offline selves.
But, do we have the willpower? Are we prepared or able to face up to the possibility that hyper-connectivity might be damaging, and whose responsibility is it to put preventative or protective measures in place? Which public or private bodies would fund research to find out whether and how smartphone usage is harmful to our wellbeing? Are we already in some sort of collective denial about the damaging impact of hyper-connectivity and might this mean sleep walking, in a hyper-connected way, into future problems?
Future Conversation: “Do you have wireless?” “No?” “Good.”
For about a decade, the question: ‘Do you have wireless?’ has been aspirational in nature, with the tacit understanding that ‘yes’ is the answer you want. Life feels easier when you are connected, and therefore better when it’s easy to connect.
But is this really how we want to live?
While chairing the RSA event “Quiet the Mind” by Matthew Johnstone, I was struck by the elegance of one statement in particular: “We are so connected, we are disconnected”.
Being constantly available to other people and influences is does not necessarily come ‘for free’ even when the wireless or mobile connection is free. There is a danger that through this kind of indiscriminate connectivity we undermine deeper connections that we tend to take for granted, including our connection to our minds, our bodies, our breath…not to mention the quality of relationships with other people.
“We are so connected, we are disconnected”
There is always a danger of being considered a technophobe when you air such thoughts, but I increasingly wonder if we will see more of this kind of perspective over the next few years. For instance, today I read a BBC article with the title: Will Digital Addiction clinics be big in 2013? (Although, disappointingly, the article itself is really just a celebration of new gadgets!).
There are some early signs that people are realising that connectivity is not entirely benign, and that it is not simply ‘up to us’ when we choose to, for instance, turn our phone off, or resist checking our mail….that places far too much confidence in willpower, which we now know is both scarce and depletable.
How can you really be off work, for instance, with the temptations of email and social media completely ‘at hand’, and the knowledge of colleagues that you can be contacted in emergency(often very loosely defined)?
Internet addiction clinics suggest that we are at the early stages of an epidemic, and some holiday resorts now pride themselves on NOT having wireless networks, with POOR mobile phone reception being an asset, not a liability. Their selling point: Come to our wonderful place, and you really can forget about the world at large…
We have written about this issue before, and hope to return to it again soon. I really don’t know how much of this fear is real and grounded, and how much of it is just generalised fear of what is new and unfamiliar. However, a trusted source with neuroscientific expertise, who has thought deeply about the impact of the increase in our screen time on our wellbeing told me something so striking and and counter-intuitive that he preferred to keep it off the record. He said that the denial of the health and wellbeing impact of our over-use of smart phones and constant connection to the internet is equivalent to climate change denial, just in a much earlier stage…
At the moment, when you say such things (e.g. use your phone less, screens are not entirely benign, it’s ok to take several days before replying to an email, internet addiction is real, there may be some interesting educational implications of over-use of technology etc…) many seem to reflexly call you a ‘technophobe’ and assume you must be some sort of ‘luddite’.
But that’s not the case at all, and most calling for caution also celebrate the enormous gains that such technology has give us. Personally I think it might be a sign of a healthy rebalancing if people start to actively seek out places where they can be relatively disconnected from the world, if only so that they might rediscover a deeper connection to themselves.
What do you think? Do tweet, comment etc…(no irony of course.)
RSA helps early-stages of the National Funding Scheme – a donations platform for arts and culture
RSA Catalyst awarded a £2,000 grant to life Fellow William Makower to support his development of a national funding scheme for our arts and cultural institutions and venues. The Catalyst panel was impressed by the strategic idea of a national digitial solution, the work done to date and the level of commitment gained across the sector, such as Director of the National Portrait Gallery Sandy Nairne FRSA. The RSA grant was used to develop the graphics for the launch including a representative movie of the scheme in action. In this guest blog William sets out the thinking behind the idea, what’s happened to date and how Fellows can get involved.
The thinking
Arts and cultural institutions are going through a critical shift. 30% cuts from the Arts Council due to a reduction in funding by £350m for the next three years, resulting in over a hundred organisations with their future threatened, coupled with reduction in spending by 24% by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, paints a bleak landscape.
But hope is budding despite the recent downpours; new figures from Arts and Business highlight a growth of 6.4% in individual giving to £382.2m last year.
The task for institutions now is to grab hold of this growth in individual giving and build its momentum. The key to doing this? Digital fundraising, utilising mobiles, tablets and new technological platforms.
The National Funding Scheme, available from March next year, will provide a means for visitors and supporters to use their mobiles and tablets to direct funds to the arts and cultural institutions they wish to support. The scheme’s aim is to raise new funds for the sector through mass giving.
The scheme will address the following issues:
- Introduces new donors to cultural institutions by providing a national, simple and accessible means
- Giving needs to tap into the point of high emotional impact (in the cafe after the exhibition, reading a plaque, at the encore etc.)
- Providing additional means for international tourists to give to our cultural institutions and organisations
- Providing a means to collect donor details and therefore begin a conversation with the donor
- The need to ‘change the language’ around giving – it is not just for the wealthy, but something all can participate in
The National Funding Scheme will provide a means for visitors and supporters to use their mobiles and tablets to direct funds to the arts and cultural institutions they wish to support
Findings to date
Panlogic, with grants from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Rothschild Foundation and others carried out over 85 face-face interviews with senior individuals across the cultural landscape and had nearly 950 responses to their online consultation. These findings, along with those identified by Ipsos Mori’s independent research found out:
- That for 48% of respondents something that shows what is being done with a donation will increase giving
- 73% of respondents want to allow donors to understand specific things that individual institutions want to raise money for
- 44% of respondents said a system with flexibility would encourage them to give more to arts and cultural institutions
- 31% of respondents said they had made a contribution to an arts or cultural institution in the last 12 months
The launch
On July 2nd 2012 Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Olympics and Sport, Sandy Nairne FRSA, and I announced the scheme at a launch event hosted by the National Portrait Gallery.
The launch was attended by arts professionals, journalists and other industry observers. Sandy’s speech was followed by the Secretary of State giving a warm welcome to the initiative followed by me giving the details behind the scheme. The RSA grant paid for the graphics and illustrations of the product at the event.
We are looking for Fellows who can provide expertise with data, licence sales, mobile payments and marketing and communications. In addition we are looking for Trustees for the charity we are setting up to run the solution, who have the following experience/expertise:
- A senior figure with arts/cultural/heritage background that could possibly chair the trustees
- An ex-development director of a UK arts/cultural/heritage organisation
- Strong financial expertise and controls
we are looking for Fellows with expertise in data management, licence sales, mobile payments and marketing and communications
More information, including photos/transcripts/invite list and the full research can be seen at www.nationalfundingscheme.org
William Makower is founder of the National Funding Scheme and CEO of Panlogic. you can contact him via william.makower@nationalfundingscheme.org
If you have an idea to tackle a social problem in a new way, visit www.thersa.org/catalyst
The Myth of Multi-tasking
Many blogs are neophilic, about stuff just posted that has to be seen, but the web is also an archive, and sometimes you stumble upon something of value from yesteryear. So I just wanted to share my rediscovery of the following thoughtful Atlantic article by Christine Rosen from the Jurassic period of 2008 called ‘The Myth of Multi-tasking’.
It is about attention which is a key thematic concern for RSA’s Social Brain work, and the following highlights, which are direct quotations from the article, were particularly striking for me:
- Advice from father to son: In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”
- Worse than marijunana? In 2005, the BBC reported on a research study, funded by Hewlett-Packard and conducted by the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London, that found, “Workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.”
- Infomania and partial attention: The psychologist who led the study called this new “infomania” a serious threat to workplace productivity…. we are “constantly scanning for opportunities and staying on top of contacts, events, and activities in an effort to miss nothing.”
- The Key to Newton’s success: When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention. People who have achieved great things often credit for their success a finely honed skill for paying attention. When asked about his particular genius, Isaac Newton responded that if he had made any discoveries, it was “owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.”
- Cultural impact: When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.
To give some balance, it is worth considering a previous RSA blog on this subject which rightly questions the evidence base for such claims.
Call for ideas: How can we better harness the web to help young people get the work, education or training that is right for them?
Against the backdrop of record youth unemployment figures, earlier this month the RSA along with Google and a number of other partners launched an ‘Interactivism’ challenge for young people. Through this challenge we’re asking participants to put forward their suggestions for how technology and the web can be used to help young people find the employment, education or training opportunities that are right for them. This could be anything from a website which directs young people to the job vacancies that suit their interests and skill sets, to a smartphone app which allows them to be in contact with mentors on the go.
Whether you’re a practitioner, a social entrepreneur, a teacher or simply somebody with an interest in helping young people, we’d like to hear about your ideas. And of course, if you’re a young person yourself we’re eager to know how you would use technology to realise your own ambitions.
The competition will be open until the 25th January, after which we’ll be shortlisting the best ideas and inviting those behind them to a ‘Hackathon’ weekend in February. Here people will be paired with Google software engineers to turn their ideas into workable software prototypes, with the winning team being awarded a set of Google Chromebooks for their efforts.
So if you think you have a worthwhile idea, even if it’s still fairly undeveloped, please visit our Interactivism page here and post your suggestion. And of course, do spread the news to your friends and colleagues if you think they’ll have their own ideas.
The Virtual Day in Court
What’s the missing word?
“Good ██████ keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.” Raymond Loewy
“People think that ██████ is styling. ██████ is not style. It’s not about giving shape to the shell and not giving a damn about the guts. Good ██████ is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.” Paola Antonelli
“██████ is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking.” Chris Pullman
It is of course – Design. It’s a common complaint (at least from designers) that design is misunderstood as a fundamentally superficial activity, but over the last five years the message is getting through. Design is now being championed in previously unlikely places – particularly on issues of public service reform. As Lord Bichard, previously Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Employment said:
“Many people think of design in terms of packaging and product design. They don’t realise design tools can go far beyond that, and can cause you to ask serious questions about business vision and service vision. Design is very much addressing the relationship with clients, customers and citizens and is relevant to the public sector, not least around services.”
However there are still fields where good design is unheard and unthought of, though the approach could play a valuable role. In one example, courtrooms across the country are planning enormous change, as the Ministry of Justice makes changes to balance its budget. As the BBC reported last week, one of the primary ideas they are testing is to increase the use of videoconferencing technology in court, allowing witnesses and defendants to give evidence remotely, potentially saving time and money.
Today we publish a report that looks at this exact issue: how could better design improve the productivity and experience of appearing in court? Drawing on an expert seminar hosted earlier this year by the RSA and Cisco during which we heard from academic researchers, legal professionals and designers, we explore how design could improve the development of such ‘Virtual Courts’, which have proved controversial for a number of reasons – some fearing that the technology could undermine the gravitas of courtroom events, or even bring threats to justice.
Our report argues that the planned extensions of the virtual courts pilots should put ‘design thinking’ at their centre to resolve these potential issues, for example by:
- Involving all court users (magistrates, defendants, interpreters, solicitors and more) to generate ideas to improve stakeholders’ experience of new technologies in court
- Rapidly testing ideas with court users, prior to pilots, to reduce the risk of failure further down the line – as well as suggesting more ideas to improve other parts of the system
- Embedding design thinking into the organisational culture of agencies in the criminal justice system to encourage on-going innovation
The full report is available for download or reading online in the Design section of the RSA’s website.
Mindfulness(4): Huxley’s Reminder Birds
In English, attention is something we are asked to pay, as if it were a scarce resource, like money. ‘Pay attention!’ is also a negative injunction, like paying your taxes. But attention is not really scarce, and when practised, rather than paid, it is positive and rewarding. As positive psychologist, Czikzsentmihalyi once said: ‘Where attention goes, energy flows.’
The challenge is that we live in an increasingly distracting world, and need a method to make our attention, the touchstone of consciousness, more readily available to us. The challenge is that the speed of the world and the nature of our technology makes it difficult to make best use of this precious resource, which is a core component of mindfulness. John Teasdale captured the centrality of this point as follows:
“Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less effort… it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful”
So how can we remember?
Aldous Huxley is most famous for his dsytopic novel Brave New World, but his final novel, Island presents a more utopian vision of the future, in which attention pays a central role. Indeed, perhaps the defining quality of the island Huxley imagined was the mindfulness of its inhabitants.
The writer Borges once described Utopia as “a Greek word, which means ‘there is no such place’” and Huxley’s utopian vision honours that idea. The island, Pala, struggles to guard its beauty, simplicity and integrity from incursions from the world outside, and though I don’t want to give away the ending, it was Utopian in the Borgesian sense.
My abiding memory of Pala is the role played by the mynahs on the island, birds that are known for their capacity to imitate. The following two extracts are separated by several pages, but serve to show the role of ‘reminder birds’ on the island, as seen through the eyes of a cynical journalist, Will Farnaby:
["Attention", a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. "Attention", it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. "Attention" (...)
"Is that your bird?" Will asked.
She shook her head.
Mynahs are like the electric light", she said. "They don't belong to anybody."
Why does he say those things?
"Because somebody taught him", she answered patiently...
But why did they teach him those things? Why 'Attention'? Why 'Here and now?'
"Well ..." She searched for the right words in which to explain the self-evident to this strange imbecile. "That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now."
"And the mynahs fly about reminding you—is that it?"
She nodded. That, of course, was it. There was a silence.]
The book is warmly recommended, but the key question for now is how we can create ‘reminder birds’ of our own.
Jules Evans, who writes a wonderful blog on the politics of wellbeing recently indicated that technology might play a role, and I wouldn’t be surpised if there was already a mindfulness ‘app’ out there. I am trying to conceive of something more visceral and direct, but can’t quite picture it.
We don’t live on Pala, and mynahs are not always there when you need them, so what would a 21st century reminder bird look like? Who or what will remind us to be mindful?
The Big Society at #opentech
Filed under: Design and Society, Enterprise, Social Economy
You could almost feel the benevolent presence of David Cameron at Opentech on Saturday. The ULU building was full of pony-tailed and bearded (and plenty without either of course) members of the Big Society, hard at work on the construction of the post-bureaucratic state. This year’s event was sponsored by data.gov.uk (the open data portal of the UK’s government) and several of the workshops and talks helped developers understand how to access the data, publicised initiatives attempting to patch up the holes and inconsistencies in it, and celebrated the tools made by people using the data such as http://govspark.org.uk/ (which allows people to compare the energy consumption of different government departments) or the by now well-known http://www.asborometer.com/ (which is a bit like an anti-social behaviour barometer for your local area).
Bill Thompson talk - by Flickr user Rain Rabbit
Of course I only heard Cameron mentioned once (along the lines of the PM is very very keen on this stuff) during the day. I’d guess that “constructing post-bureaucratic state” is not a term that many of the people there would use to describe their work. Perhaps the motivation for people to take control and create things with the data is rather the personal satisfaction of creating something useful (in a historic sense as well as an everyday sense), status among their peers, or perhaps simple frustration at the way in which public sector IT projects seem to burn money to do things that can be achieved in a much less resource intensive way. Whatever the motivation though, it’s clear that an amount of activity vastly disproportionate to its size and financial backing is taking place by “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens”.
What’s so new about ingenuity?
Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in his The Ingenuity Gap that the increasing complexity, pace and unpredictability of our world make a greater demand on our ingenuity than ever before. He suggests there is a gap that emerges between this demand and our ability to supply the ingenuity required to match it.
I’ve been thinking a little bit about ingenuity lately, particularly the distinction between ingenuity, innovation, invention and creativity, and there are a couple of characteristics of ingenuity that I like. One of these is picked up in The Ingenuity Gap, which notes that innovation describes new ideas being put into practice, but ingenuity “assumes that ideas don’t have to be new to be useful”. I think this nuance appeals to my distrust of the hype that accompanies technical innovation.
A similar theme was picked up in the excellently-named Hopeful Monsters and the Trough Of Disillusionment blog post last week from BERG. Matt Jones reports on a workshop that re-imagined applications for those commonplace technologies that would fall into the Trough of Disillusionment in Gartner’s Hype Cycle, like low capacity USB sticks, landline 
telephones or accelerometers. Resulting for example in Matt Webb’s comment “cross-breeding thumbdrives and, oh, something else that triggered a thought about audio… and the product that came up was audio textbooks on super cheap hardware for the developing world”.
The RSA is an organisation in the rare position of being able to look back as well as forwards. Its original working practice of giving out premiums “for any and every work of distinguished ingenuity”, has meant that the organisation has a long perspective on many technological developments over many years. Some of these [pdf link] are as relevant now as they were in their day.
I wonder if, when we face huge public spending cuts and the need to use the Earth’s resources more sustainably, some of the solutions might lie in past ingenuity as well as future innovation. So to stretch the original metaphor, might some of the most appropriate bridges over the ingenuity gap be those that have simply fallen out of use rather than ones that need engineering from scratch…?
Twitter feed of #theRSA- @Samfr @miss_mcinerney @debrakidd look out for June #thersa report on in year admissions. May 22, 2013 joehallg (Joe Hallgarten)
- RT @MParsfield: @davidstuckler's book is out now http://t.co/sXIRTYf8h4 That's all from me, goodnight #RSAStuckler #theRSA May 22, 2013 BookshopEye (Bookshop Watch)
- @davidstuckler's book is out now http://t.co/sXIRTYf8h4 That's all from me, goodnight #RSAStuckler #theRSA May 22, 2013 MParsfield (Matthew Parsfield)
- That's the end of a superb and important event. Thanks to @davidstuckler and Dr McCoy #RSAStuckler #theRSA May 22, 2013 MParsfield (Matthew Parsfield)
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