After months of campaigning it wasn’t even close. In every single council district across Manchester, people voted to reject the £3bn Transport Innovation Fund investment, and the congestion charge attached to it. This came as little surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the debate. The referendum was lost by the ‘Yes’ campaign months ago. The ‘Yes’ campaign entirely failed to communicate the benefits of the TIF bid to voters. The volume of paper sent out was massive but the presentation was too complex and the detail too great. In marketing terms, it was all...read more.

Gordon Brown has just completed an address to the CBI, in which he alluded to a possible investment in a national fibre network. He suggested a modern, British equivalent to the American new deal, the policy reform commenced by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s that included a massive investment programme. To create jobs FDR invested government money in a massive expansion of national infrastructure. This reference combined with Brown’s highlighting of the importance of technology to the British economy suggests one of two things to me. Either he plans to offer BT a regulatory incentive to...read more.

Coming to this story a little belatedly but better late than never. Only a short post, a plea to the government: don’t do it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this. Following the many and monumental recent IT balls-ups, the government has decided that it would now be a great idea to blow £12bn on a privacy-busting database to monitor our emails and mobile phone calls. Today our service providers already store data on who we call, when and how often, as well as the websites we visit, and the email addresses we...read more.

One of the most interesting conversations I had at the Next Gen 08 event was with Mike Ryan, MD of Idaho. Mike and I agreed that there is a worrying trend developing. The young people of the UK are extremely adept consumers of technology. But they seem to be lacking – and uninterested in gaining – the underlying knowledge required to develop that technology further. Computing devices are now so easy to use that no comprehension of how they work is required. With science subjects becoming ever less popular in schools, Mike and I are both...read more.

I spent Tuesday at a fascinating conference: Next Gen ’08. The event brought together representatives from a wide range of backgrounds to debate the next steps in the development of broadband Britain. Our current copper wire broadband infrastructure is reaching the limits of its capacity, and to keep pace with developments around the world, we need to look at alternatives. Unfortunately, those alternatives are expensive. The widely preferred option is fiber optic cable. This option has the potential to scale to meet demand for many years. Unfortunately, laying the fiber would cause massive disruption to traffic...read more.

Blimey it’s been a busy couple of weeks. I find myself with lots to write about and wishing that I could devote a little more time to writing about things as and when they occur to me. Although that might be dangerous, since the long stretch of the M40 between High Wycombe and the M42 is my best thinking ground… Anyway, on to some new posts. First up: broadband.

I am returning to Lancaster University on Wednesday for the Alumni Careers Fair. It got me thinking about the skills that I will be looking for when we come to recruit our first graduate. My thoughts were further stimulated along this line following a chat with Katrina Delargy, CEO of TIYGA, an interesting start-up based at Daresbury Innovation Centre. Katrina raised the issue of ‘fluid intelligence’ versus ‘crystalline intelligence’. These are terms created by psychologist Raymond Cattell and developed in partnership with John Horn. Fluid intelligence describes the innate ability to think abstractly and solve problems....read more.

The Smartphone Show has a misleading title. It’s not actually about smartphones, the class of pocket computer that today incorporates a huge range of devices. Rather it is about one particular operating system used by these devices: Symbian OS. This is not to disparage the event. Symbian is a fantastic (British – for now) success story, and for all the iPhone hype, it remains the market leader by a large factor. Not only is Symbian OS used on hundreds of millions of devices from the likes of Nokia, Samsung and SonyEricsson, it has a massive development...read more.

Some kind soul has gone to the trouble of scanning and uploading every page of the original Usborne Book of the Future. Clearly they have less worries about copyright than me, though given the book’s age, and the lack of response to my email to Usborne about editing a new version, I’m guessing they’re not too concerned. I would highly recommend checking it out – it is still genius. I keep my very battered copy near my desk for reference, inspiration and entertainment.

One area of human enhancement that I didn’t tackle in my last post is that of drugs. This can quickly get you into some tricky (and spam-worthy) areas. Certainly chemical treatments for physical dysfunction have become socially acceptable, but it is the enhancement of mental abilities that has hit the news this week. Though apparently not the most rigorous of studies, a survey of 1400 adults has shown a high proportion (one in five) use mental performance enhancers. Drugs such as Ritalin and Provigil can apparently boost memory and concentration. People have been using these drugs...read more.