What’s a sociotechnical transition? Why should you care? What does history teach us? Why might it be a false teacher? All good questions and they received good (though sometimes, by necessity provisional) answers yesterday as Dr Florian Kern of University of Sussex spoke on ‘Governing Low Carbon Transitions’ (see foot of this post for the... Continue Reading →
Technology as fetish? South Australia and the Social Economy.
A rather interesting event today, high above the mean streets of Adelaide. What place might “technology” (we will come back to the scare quotes) have in helping Adelaide (and South Australia more generally) cope with the slings and arrows of deindustrialisation and globalisation? The event was organised by the Dunstan Foundation (named for the last... Continue Reading →
Weil’s disease – or ‘the internet is eating my brain’
When I was in Australia, I ended up with a smartphone (the handset was as cheap as the cheapest non-smart model, so I thought 'why not?'). There were two consequences a) I met up with someone who I'd have otherwise missed because I was able to check email on the move b) I freaked the... Continue Reading →