By Greg Fisher Last week I referred to the differences between natural and social complex systems in a blog article about FuturICT.  I received an email from an esteemed colleague who questioned (paraphrasing) whether this distinction was useful and whether in so doing I was putting humans on a pedestal.  In this article I want […]

By David Hales Almost everything we do these days leaves some kind of data trace in some computer system somewhere. When such data is aggregated into huge databases it is called “Big Data”. It is claimed social science will be transformed by the application of computer processing and Big Data. The argument is that social […]

By Greg Fisher Last week the European Commission chose not to invest in FuturICT, which was a massively ambitious project to integrate ICT and complexity science.  The aim was, as their website puts it, “understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems” and in so doing to “create a paradigm shift”. Driven mainly by ETH […]

By Rory Sutherland Those of you who are, like me, only dimly familiar with the writings of Peter Drucker will at least know one of his most famous pronouncements. “There are only two things in a business that make money – innovation and marketing. Everything else is a cost.” I always liked this assertion, and […]

By Greg Fisher I recently had cause to look at the Draft Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, which was published a few weeks ago.  It made for depressing reading because, in my opinion, the proposed reforms will do little to protect the UK from a future banking crisis.  Furthermore, it will not address two fundamental […]