Essay Posts
The forgotten history of Pearl Harbor
Japan’s attack on the US 70 years ago was not a surprise, but rather the culmination of imperial rivalry.
Read the full article...1968: North Vietnam strikes back
In January 1968, Vietnamese communists launched the world-changing Tet Offensive
Read the full article...China’s leap forward on patents
How groundbreaking are China’s patents? How innovative really is China?
Read the full article...The greening of the ivory towers in education
A National Association of Scholars report interrogates the tyranny of sustainability in education.
Read the full article...Chinese innovation assessed
Can China innovate? How might its innovations change the rest of the world?
Read the full article...Transport: breaking through the impasse
ESSAY: Six arguments for innovation in transport.
Read the full article...IT’s not the future
The Second Machine Age sacrifices sense at the altar of technology
Read the full article...Seven reasons we should celebrate manufacturing
Commentators bemoaning the rise of ‘stuffocation’ miss the benefits manufacturing provides.
Read the full article...Time for some high-street innovation
Britain’s retail sector needs to stop worrying about the greens and learn to love new technology
Read the full article...Big Pharma’s little critics
One defence of drug manufacturers, and three attacks on modern medicine, offer much. But none quite explains Big Pharma’s crisis of scientific and technological innovation.
Read the full article...The fuzzy front end of product design projects
In innovation, the simple transfer of knowledge isn’t enough – but uncertainty isn’t all bad
Read the full article...Innovation in energy: expressions of a crisis
Using academic, journalistic and statistical sources, this paper situates energy innovation in historical context before describing the current sclerosis of Western energy R&D.
Read the full article...The craze for design thinking
The historical and social reasons why hip designers talk of little else. Plus: elements of an alternative.
Read the full article...The Next Trend in Design
Given the alacrity with which design managers uphold and then forget about future trends, it’s worth asking: Where do such trends really come from?
Read the full article...The causes of Fukushima: report of Annual symposium of the World Nuclear Association, 2011
The power of the nucleus had little to do with What Went Wrong at the TEPCO nuclear reactors in 2011
Read the full article...Clausewitz after 9/11
The Prussian master’s brilliant analytical method in On War provides richer insights into the contemporary wars against terrorism than anything his glib critics have come up with
Read the full article...Come, friendly bombs, fall on Brown’s eco-towns
With his plans to erect zero-carbon homes in zero-car suburbs, Gordon Brown builds on the Blairites’ small-minded approach to housing
Read the full article...Futures and trends: foresight, forecasting or futurology
In brief, the market launch of a new product or service takes place months, and usually years, after its original conception and design.
Read the full article...Computer games and sex difference
The suspicion exists that there are not enough computer games being programmed by women for women. Yet women do play computer games.
Read the full article...Why don’t women play computer games?
The fact that these are boys’ toys has been theorised as evidence for the ‘politics of difference’
Read the full article...Homes 2016: Blueprint Broadside
Too many blueprints for the home of the future begin from the interior. They should start from the factory, argues James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley
Read the full article...Play as the Main Event in International and UK Culture
Play has become a dominant trend in the culture of Western adults. This chapter of Cultural Trends looks at its prevalence and growth
Read the full article...Brands demystified
Throughout the world of business, people believe in the magic of brands
Read the full article...Digital Visions: Cult IT
Are the claims made for Digital Technology accurate? And if not, why is the arts world so anxious to embrace IT as the latest must-have fashion accessory?
Read the full article...The Battle for the Living Room
Where many see excitement and promise, the reality of consumer electronics is confusion and a focus on digital minutiae
Read the full article...Before we rush to declare a new era
The doctrine that the world has entered a new Age of Information has plenty of precedents. It is wrong.
Read the full article...Report on design for Glasgow Development Agency, 1994
Glasgow Development Agency (GDA) wants quickly and visibly to help Glaswegian firms improve the calibre of their design.
Read the full article...How the East was won: Japan in the 20th century
The West usually attributes Japanese industrial success to innate national characteristics such as feudal loyalty, hard work and passivity
Read the full article...Knee-jerk reactions: exercise and personal health
In exercise and personal health, ‘one must now mix egoism with electronics’
Read the full article...Going down for the third time
As the 100th anniversary of the First World War approaches, let’s remember that Empire was the root of Britain’s industrial decline.
Read the full article...A new kind of nationalism in design
The geopolitics of design: it is emerging as a highly tangible form of economic aggression
Read the full article...
Good luck to the #farmers on their march today!
I probably don't need to tell you to wrap up warm. But please remember that no part of the UK's green agenda is your friend. All of it is intended to deprive you of your livelihood, one way or another. That is its design.
Brilliant piece by @danielbenami. RECOMMENDED
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Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls