Data Literacy: Fuel For A Human Future
Data, it is often said, is the currency of the future.
Actually, trust is that currency. Trust in how data is collected and shared by machines and trust in our own capacity to analyse data through logical and critical thinking.
The future will increasingly be shaped by decisions we make using online data and by the artificial intelligence (AI) machines that feed on that data.
If the data can’t be trusted, or we have no confidence in our ability to analyse it, we’ll never hold AI to account or produce innovation that improves life on earth.
This is a matter of concern. While most of us rely on digital data to work, rest, relate and play, we are functionally illiterate when it comes to reading, understanding and interpreting it.
We urgently need to equip ourselves and emerging generations with enhanced skills to deal with all things digital, in a way that enhances our h
02 March 2023 |
Deep Dive Into 2023 Technologies
Take a deep breath! 2023 is going to be a roller coaster ride when it comes to new technologies - a true blend of the exhilarating and the unsettling.
Technology should never define us. The future is not a product of the technologies we use but of how we, as moral agents decide to use them.
That said, technology is important. As the media education pioneer John Culkin famously observed, “We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.”
For futurists like me, this is a season of being quizzed by media, leaders and friends alike about what we might expect in the year ahead.
Tech trends and, much more importantly, underlying shifts in human attitudes, reveal themselves only after months of consistent study.
So, let’s take a deep dive to explore some of the most consequential technologies we’ll see in 2023. Hold on tight.<
15 December 2022 |
We Salute Elizabeth the Great
I am a true child of the Elizabethan era. You may well be, too.
The late Queen’s reign was just four years old when I was born. I vividly remember outdoor primary school assemblies in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. Every week, even in winter, we stood to attention for the anthem - back in the days when we still sang “God save the Queen”.
I clearly remember the photo of the Queen in the office of my high school and in public halls where my friends and I would attend children’s clubs. I’ve seen various versions of that photo regularly throughout my life. It’s only now that I realise how many of those photos there must have been, spread across the land and the nations of the Commonwealth.
A similar photo hung on the wall of a civic centre in Oxfordshire as, in middle age, I took my citizenship test and was accepted as a British citizen. I’m proud to be a citizen of two o
09 September 2022 |
Facial Recognition, Migrants and Techism
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” So said Albert Einstein in the wake of the atom bomb’s deployment.
We still live under the shadow of the nuclear cloud, even if the threat has, in the public mind, taken a back seat to global warming of late. At least, until Russia invaded Ukraine. Yet there are also other ways in which Einstein’s observation remains remarkably prescient.
In what appears to be a world-first, the British Home Office and Justice Ministry might soon use wearable smartwatches to keep track of migrants convicted of crimes. Said migrants would be expected to upload photos of themselves up to five times per day. In time, of course, the same approach might be used on native Britons who’ve committed cri
09 August 2022 |
The Queen: (Online) Visibility With Restraint!
“The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts.”
So said Queen Elizabeth II who, if the Platinum Jubilee’s celebrations were anything to go by, will be remembered for the lasting good she has done.
According to recent (but pre-Jubilee) YouGov figures, the Queen is "liked" by 75 percent of the British population. She is "disliked" by just nine percent and only 13 percent feel “indifferent” toward her. Aside from some short periods of disquiet, notably after the death of Princess Diana, the respect we have for her has remained undiminished through a very long reign.
In 2015, when Elizabeth II became our longest-serving monarch, a Sky News poll suggested that 70 percent of Brits believed their country should remain a monarchy "
06 June 2022 |
Metaverse: A Danger To Children and Probably You Too
Since Meta, aka Facebook, announced its plans for the metaverse, I've used the phrase "wild west" more than once to describe it. New investigations show, however, that it's going to be much worse than that, especially for our children.
A report this week for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme features an undercover journalist who is “disguised” in the metaverse as a 13-year-old. The report paints a despicable picture of malicious and extreme racial slurs, simulated sex acts and blatant discussion about sex acts, all purveyed in front of children.
Thirteen is supposedly the minimum age for creating a Facebook account and therefore accessing the me
25 April 2022 |
Ukraine: 8 Point Plan to Save a Nation
Our hearts break for the people of Ukraine. It's a country I've visited numerous times over twenty years, working alongside some of the most committed and far-sighted community leaders one could hope to meet.
Personal or collective empathy, of course, doesn't make reaching decisions on how to respond to Mr Putin's aggression any easier for our political leaders.
The question of NATO membership is not the only issue they must consider when it comes to when and how to defend - or at least stand firmly alongside - countries that border Russia.
Russia is, of course, a nuclear power. Any battle with it involves significant risks to a much larger body of people globally. Economic and travel sanctions, particularly weak ones, won't stop Putin, who sees returning Ukraine to the status of a vassal state as a kind of vocation. It is something on which he feels he must act before he is too old to do so.
27 February 2022 |
The Shape of Jobs 2022
"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change," said Stephen Hawking.
Some change, though, is tough to negotiate. Especially when so many of life's certainties are shifting like sand under our feet. The pandemic is a case in point. It has changed so much in our social and cultural landscape.
In some areas, Covid-19 has sped up changes that would have occurred even without a pandemic - perhaps over a longer time frame. Employment is a prime example. In 2021, we’ve seen what some economists call the “Great Resignation”.
At the end of 2021, the UK unemployment level is just over four per cent. This is far better than many people expected once the government’s furlough scheme ended. That said, one study in the UK and Ireland this year found that 38 per cent of workers s
22 December 2021 |
David's Law Not Enough For Digital Clean Up
The murder of British parliamentarian Sir David Amess has sent shock waves through the nation and its houses of government.
Alongside calls for greater security of political figures, some MPs have called upon the government to rein in social media. They demand a new “David’s law” to crack down on social media abuse of public figures and end the online anonymity that fosters it.
Meanwhile, intelligence services express growing concern about “bedroom radicals”, people who engage with hateful digital propaganda then transform passive alignment into violent action.
The dark underbelly of the internet is the Dark Web, so-called because it is largely hidden from everyday view. Getting to it, however, is very simple. You need only a particular browser and, possibly, a crypto-wallet, with digital cash to facilitate anonymous transactions.
The Dark Web is used by state players, to access compromising mate
19 October 2021 |
TechnoKings In Space! Is the World Ready?
THE YEAR IS 2030. Jeff Bezos prepares to welcome a guest to his Blue Origin space station. It’s Elon Musk, on transfer from his Space X “Branson” moon base.
Having resolved some of their animosity issues, two of the world’s technokings will meet to discuss the continued use of Musk’s Starlink satellites to host Amazon’s orbiting internet servers.
The head of Facebook Universe, Mark Zuckerberg will then join via holographic haptic VR, along with the heads of Apple, Alphabet and three other tech behemoths.
Discussions behind closed doors will focus on promoting BigTech’s combined projects, protecting BigTech copyrights and dealing with “short-sighted” governments, democratic and otherwise. There will be no independent media presence.
BACK IN 2021, all this might sound far-fetched. It isn’t. Even wifi
16 July 2021 |
BBC Bashir Saga Feeds Trust Deficit
If public trust is a currency, the BBC will be dipping into its savings for some time to come.
In an age of increasing media diversification (aka splintering), the BBC is still one of the world’s leading news organisations. Its commitment to placing news gatherers in all the right places and attempting to provide a balance of views - internationally if not domestically - is highly regarded.
The controversy surrounding former BBC journalist Martin Bashir, however, creates a new set of problems that will damage public trust - and not only trust in the BBC.
This comes at a time when widely trusted broadcasters are scarce on the ground. Some earlier contenders have dropped away, having fallen under the spell of ultra-left or -right ideologies and lost their sense of the middle ground.
When Martin Bashir’s interview with Princess Diana was broadcast in November 1995, the BBC was lauded for producing a global exclusive. I
21 May 2021 |
TechnoKings Rule. But At What Cost?
“Crowns do queer things to the heads beneath them,” wrote George R.R. Martin. This is as true of crowns claimed in the worlds of BigTech and new media as it is in traditional monarchies. Tesla recently added the title “TechnoKing” to its list of official titles for its flamboyant founder, Elon Musk. The electric car-maker didn’t share its reasons for doing so, nor did it say what it means by the term. Knowing the often mischievous Musk, the whole thing may be a stunt, designed only to get people chattering. If that’s true, it worked on me! Whatever the motive, this coronation allows us to look again at the impact BigTech has on our lives and societies. This will be an increasingly important question as we gradually emerge from our Covid cocoon, where we’ve come to rely on technology more than ever. In less threatening times, we’ve accepted new applications of technology wit
25 March 2021 |
2021: Tech Innovation Boom!
“An optimist,” wrote Bill Vaughan, “stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” Whichever of those camps you identify with, you’ll probably agree that 2020 is leaving us with few things to cheer. Dig a little deeper, though, and you may find that this year of pestilence and turbulence has set us up for a burst of innovation going forward. Consider the arena of technology. In the 1960s, it took four years of concentrated research and development to create a vaccine against the mumps, a serious viral infection. Yet we have seen two entirely new anti-Covid vaccines engineered, tested at scale, manufactured and approved in less than a year. As I write, the Pfizer and Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccines are being distributed across the UK. They will potentially change the lives of millions of people worldwide. Meanwhile, scores of therapies have been tested, which mi
31 December 2020 |
Covid-19 Shouldn't Kill Cash!
The Great Pandemic of 2020. It has left millions of people worldwide living at least part of their lives in isolation.
Of all the pandemic’s long-term economic outcomes, the worst might be the complete eradication of cash.
Cash hasn’t been very useful during the Covid-19 season. Under the shadow of lockdowns, many stores and restaurants have become delivery-only services. Cashless payments have become not just convenient but indispensable.
Even if we could use cash just now, most of us are nervous about handling paper notes and coins.
Of course, we were moving incrementally toward a digitally-driven economy well before Covid-19. In 2016, only 34% of payments in the UK were made in cash. In Finland, cash is already considered outdated. In 2018, Sweden’s central bank announc
19 November 2020 |
The Hot Response Culture (Why Reason & Compassion Should Prevail)
Your smartphone has seven million times the memory and 100,000 times the processing power of the guidance computer onboard Apollo 11. Have you wondered what we’re collectively doing with all that power? Are we spreading more heat than light, or finding constructive solutions?
These are important questions, given the range of hugely significant challenges - and opportunities - we face. And especially so in the age of COVID-19, where we rely so heavily on digital communications to maintain friendships, stay informed and explore schools of opinion.
On present evidence, it seems many of us believe that the best reaction is an over-heated one, whatever the debate at hand. Calm and carefully reasoned deliberation appears to have been devalued, in deference to what I’m going to call a “hot response culture” (HRC).
This is most obvious in the world of social media, where hyper-emotional responses often appear to reign supreme, es
25 August 2020 |
COVID-19 Emergency: An Opportunity
“The life unexamined is not worth living,” said Socrates.
The effects of COVID-19, or future variants thereof, are not be treated lightly.
The virus is set to impact many lives and must be fought and overcome. However, paralysing panic will not generate the solutions we need.
Sometimes, in the face of great challenges, we lose our individual and collective capacity for perspective. We start to see relatively trivial aspects of the problem as huge and very important things as insignificant.
In the face of this particular virus, rushing to stock up on toilet roll achieves little - apart, perhaps, from making us feel like we’re doing something.
A behavioural scientist suggested this week that we buy toilet rolls because they come in large packages, which are prominently displayed in supermarkets. Buying them, he said, makes us feel that we’re purchasing something at least mildly impo
13 March 2020 |
Safer Internet Day For Children!
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." So said Nelson Mandela.
Today is Safer Internet Day. It provides us with an important opportunity to reflect on the importance of adequate protections when it comes to the internet engagement of children.
The internet has, on a society-wide level, proven a great boon in many ways. Yet, according to one of the leading children’s charities in Britain, a rising number of pre-teens are being exposed to the less seemly side of the internet.
The NSPCC this month estimated that 25,300 child abuse image and sexual grooming offences were recorded by police in the past nine months.
Using police crime data, the charity estimates that one online abuse offence is recorded every 16 minutes in England and Wales. There can be
11 February 2020 |
The Tyranny of Digital Shopper Anxiety
Most of us know that the internet can be hugely distracting, but do we think about how much it plays on our emotions and anxieties - particularly at Christmas?
If you believe the news reports and marketing hype, the pre-Christmas season is one of dark Fridays and web-manic Mondays.
Until recently, Black Friday was to bricks-and-mortar stores what Cyber-Monday, is to their online counterparts. (Nowadays, more people do their shopping online across both days.)
Projections last week suggested that shoppers across the UK would spend £5.6 billion on sales related to both.
The good news is that going into the Christmas sales season, fewer Brits said they intended to engage with these sales-fests than did so last year. In 2018, 62 per cent of adults said they planned to do so; this year the figure was down to 42 per cent.
The change may be linked in part to the imminent general election. Still, the numbers of people invol
01 December 2019 |
Give Yourself the Gift of Social Media Down-Time!
Christmas, it is often said, is a time for giving. Perhaps the greatest gift we can offer those we love is the gift of our attention. Our best gift to ourselves may be simply time for mental reflection and emotional renewal.
Both may require a deliberate decision to spend less time in the world of social media.
A University of Pennsylvania study in 2018 revealed not just a correlation but a causative impact between social media use and lower levels of mental health. This applied especially in areas such as anxiety, depression, feelings of isolation and suicidal tendencies.
The report was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.
The researchers found that people who limited their social media use - including Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat - to a total of just 30 minutes per day, reported feeling significantly better after three weeks, that people who did not.
They felt noticeably les
19 November 2019 |
Understanding the Greta Effect
In August 2018, a teenager from Stockholm decided it was time for action on climate change.
She had very little to use as leverage in support of her cause, so she went on strike. She refused to attend school, setting up a one-person demonstration outside the Swedish Parliament.
Since that time, Greta Thunberg has found herself at the apex of an international movement. Her recent speech to the United Nations inspired some who watched it and saddened others.
Her calls for climate action have proven provocative but effective in terms of increasing public awareness. Whether they will, in the end, provide more heat than light only time will tell.
Many people struggle to understand the Greta effect. Some, while admiring Ms Thunberg’s vision and tenacity, are concerned for her health, especially since her quest became a media phenomenon.
To some degree, I share that concern. Greta’s story is front-page mater
30 September 2019 |
Supreme Court: Serving or Subverting Democracy?
Has the British Supreme Court today served democracy or subverted it?
A good many Brits may be asking just that question, following today’s ruling that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent recommendation to the Queen, that Parliament should be recessed, was illegal.
The recess process, known as proroguing, takes place in the lead up to a Queen’s speech, in which the head of state outlays her government's major policies for the new parliamentary season.
In summing up the unanimous decision of the twelve justices, Lady Hale reiterated the Court’s commitment to stay out of party politics. She did, however, add that the circumstances of this prorogation are ‘unlikely’ ever to occur again.
With due respect to her ladyship and her eminent fellow judges, I think this is misguided. This type of situation, where courts are involved in questions about proroguing, will a
24 September 2019 |
The Queen and "The King of the World"
"You may not be Moses, young man, but go tell Pharoah to let my people go."
I wonder if that is the unreported caption for the photograph of Boris Johnson bowing to her Majesty the Queen, as she appointed him her fourteenth Prime Minister on Wednesday.
As a boy, Boris Johnson told his sister that he would like, one day, to be "king of the world".
He hasn't quite achieved that lofty position, but being the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is no small consolation prize.
I voted Remain in 2016, but with huge reservations about what I thought the rather large elephant in the room: Brussel's cultural commitment to "ever closer [political] union."
Those reservations have, I think, been proven well-founded in the days since the vote, as leaders such as France's President Macron are pushing for a European army and more.
24 July 2019 |
Face App: Recipe for ID Theft
In recent days, my Instagram and Twitter feeds have been inundated with photos of people I know, who suddenly look much older than I remember them.
These friends have brought into the Face App craze.
Face App applies the computing power of artificial intelligence to recreate human facial features in a way that adds (or subtracts) years of natural ageing. The results are either remarkable or, in some cases, creepy.
Here’s the thing, though. To use the app you must upload a current image of yourself to the Face App servers. As with some other photo-sharing services, that brings risks to privacy and personal security of which most users are unaware.
Face App, however, takes these risks to a higher level.
The terms of use statement for the Face App service are quite clear on the following. (These are not quoted directly here, but the original terms have been
18 July 2019 |
Facebook's Libra Requires Too Much Trust
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” So said Ernest Hemingway.
The question is, how much trust should we invest, for how long, before we decide we’d do better to invest our trust elsewhere?
Facebook has just announced plans to launch a new blockchain-based digital currency networked called Libra.
Facebook will be asking many of its users to invest their trust in its ability to provide a stable alternative to traditional currencies - and one which guarantees privacy and security.
Reactions to Facebook’s announcement have been mixed. Financial regulators in regions like the EU are watchful. As things currently stand, networks like Libra would diminish the power of governments over the regulation of currencies.
Predictably, many banks are also unimpressed. Blockchain currencies promote user-driven online ledgers and P2P exchanges, cutting out some of the
19 June 2019 |
Privacy is the Future? Not on Trains
“The future is privacy,” is the new mantra of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO. Not long ago it was: “Privacy is dead”. Which is it?
This is an important choice and not one reserved for BigTech titans alone. It is a choice we each must make, especially in the way we engage with public authorities and companies that seem intent on fudging the line between service, security and privacy.
Transport for London (TfL), the UK capital’s transit authority, has announced that it is about to start collecting data from users’ wifi as they move around the underground rail system.
The data collection, which will start on July 8, will purportedly be used to offer sturdier details on how people move around the Tube system and within stations. This, says the authority, will help with its long-term planning and will enable it to provide more effective updates for travellers.
The data collected will, at this stage
23 May 2019 |
Julian Assange: Anarchist or Activist?
It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? After a long publicity hiatus, brought on by his self-imposed exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange has found his way back into the headlines.
Whistleblowing has been growing in influence since the 1970s. Yet over the past decade or more, Mr Assange and the Wikileaks organisation he founded, have turned whistleblowing into something akin to a career choice for some young adults.
Wikileaks became famous - or infamous, depending on your worldview - for providing an unprecedented platform for people who wanted to leak sensitive secrets. Their work was glamorised by the publicity Wikileaks generated.
Some commentators argue that Julian Assange and his colleagues are champions of free speech. Others see them as defenders of press freedom. Still others claim that the Wikileaks crew are making a stand in support of the true culture of the internet
11 April 2019 |
Christchurch and Social Media Censorship
Last week marked the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of the public internet, in the form of the world wide web.
This is, of course, the mechanism through which most of us engage the internet. Marking the event, the web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, spoke about the dangers of an internet that’s now driven more by corporate interests than by individual users.
He called for a re-think of our values and ethics when it comes to the web and the internet in general.
The timeliness of his statements was highlighted by the slow reaction of certain sites to the attack on worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Fifty people died in the attack and the alleged perpetrator live-streamed his shooting spree on social media. Reportedly, both the video and the killer’s so-called “manifesto” - an attempt to justify his crimes - remained online for a while after the attacks.
Facebook claims to have s
18 March 2019 |
Should An ISIS Bride Become Stateless?
ISIS bride and mother Shamima Begum, now aged 19, has been stripped of her British citizenship by the Home Office.
Her parents, British citizens born in Bangladesh, are considering a legal appeal.
To form a reasoned view on this troubling case, there are at least three issues we must be considered. Emotion will form part of any human opinion, but it should not rule over reason.
This could prove to be an important test case for years to come - and not just for the UK.
The first question to be answered is this: how many of this young woman’s decisions during her time in Syria were made with an adult awareness and perspective? Was she willing - and free - to flee ISIS territory at any time during her stay? Would she have done so, with her child, if she could?
Ms Begum left the UK, of her own volition, at age 15, in defiance of her parents.
She might well have known that she was headed into a war zone. She may have been aware
20 February 2019 |
Ten Years on Twitter - Here's What I've Learned
Is today is a day for celebration, reflection or recrimination - or all three? I’m not sure. It’s the tenth anniversary of my first tweet.
My first humble contribution to the Twittersphere was sent at 1:43pm on February 13, 2009.
I was already an early adopter of YouTube. The new medium, allowing me to wax lyrical in less than 140 characters, seemed like both a unique opportunity to share ideas and a healthy exercise in economical writing. I’d been producing 30- and 60-second radio spots for years, so how hard could that be?
Here I am, 37,500 tweets later and I’ve learned a few things about Twitter and about social media generally.
1. Twitter doesn’t love me.
As far as I’m aware, I don’t suffer from paranoid delusions. I’m not a conspiracy theorists, placing myself at the centre of the conspiracy. However, I’m well aware that the primary purpose of Twitter, at l
13 February 2019 |
Should Social Media Be Banned?
A recent story in British newspapers linked the suicide of a 14-year-old boy to social media use. In 2017, a 12-year-old girl in Miami streamed her suicide live on Facebook.
These and similarly tragic tales have boosted an already fervent debate on the links between social media engagement and mental health.
At 2030Plus, we’ve been reviewing for some years the links between cognitive function and internet involvement. Other, larger research organisations have done likewise. There is little doubt that a growing reliance on digital technology has changed the way our brains work.
Governments are under pressure to act. Last year, the Australian government opened an investigation into Facebook, the largest and, for many, the most troubling of the new media giants.
The company released, without authorisation, data from 300,000 Australian user accounts to the now defunct Cambridge Analytica. Worldwide, Facebook
29 January 2019 |
Bitcoin Turns 10. Is Cashless Next?
Happy Bit-day! You may not have noticed, but this week, Bitcoin celebrated its tenth birthday.
On January 3, 2009, the initial block in the blockchain - that's crypto-speak for a distributed computer ledger - was "mined" by Satoshi Nakamoto and cryptocurrency was born in the form of Bitcoin.
The enigmatic Satoshi is either an individual or a group. Whichever is the case, he/she/they melded cryptography and computer science to create the world's first totally digital currency.
What an eventful first decade Bitcoin has endured - or enjoyed, depending on your perspective.
Cryptocash platforms of almost every kind have seen wild surges and drops in value since they first came to public attention.
Bitcoin is recognised by the US Senate but is not tied to any hard currency, such as the dollar or the gold standard. This arguably made investment in Bitcoin something of a faith-quest for many of its first-generation users.
03 January 2019 |
Brexit - We Have A Deal But What Does It Mean?
“We cannot make good news out of bad practice.” So wrote famed American newsman Edward R. Murrow.
Another way of saying this is, of course: we cannot make bad practice into good news. This is especially true when it comes to something as historically significant as Brexit.
As a social commentator and futurist who is regularly engaged with the media, I consider myself - I hope not arrogantly - to be a relatively astute follower of the news.
Yet I, like many relatively informed British citizens, struggle to identify the key features of the 580-page Brexit deal document which will soon be put to the vote in the House of Commons.
Our media and press feature a lot of headlines about the political to-and-fro between London and Brussels and about the internal struggles within Parliament.
Most, however, give relatively little space to an accessible explanation of what the deal actually means in practical terms.
26 November 2018 |
Brexit and the Future of British Democracy
Hardly any issue divides Brits today as does Brexit. In the face of EU push-backs and domestic political infighting, the potential impacts of a suggested second vote, on Britain’s democracy, are often overlooked.
Some advocates of a second vote want to replay the 2016 referendum. They want, they say, to help Britain avoid an historic mistake.
Others claim that a second vote should be about the public ratifying the government's final deal with Brussels. But even in that camp there are many who hope for just one final outcome: the complete reversal of the 2016 vote.
I voted Remain - with, I must say, some strong reservations about the EU's push for "ever closer union". I am proud of my dual British-Australian citizenship and, having lived in northern Europe for a decade before moving to the UK, I’ve seen many of the benefits of EU citizenship.
However, I’ve also watched
21 September 2018 |
Depression Among Church Leaders - A Problem For Us All
In the US early this week, news media carried the story of a young church minister in California who committed suicide. His wife, though aware that he suffered from depression and anxiety, was in no way prepared for this outcome.
"Never in a million years would I have imagined this would be the end of his story," said Kayla Stoecklein of her beloved husband, Andrew. He left behind three young children. His death has inspired many other pastors to write online about their struggles with mental health.
Until now, little has been said or written about the issue of church leadership and depression. Yet there is no reason to believe or expect that religious leaders should not be impacted by an issue which, according to the World Health Organisation, now affects 300 million people worldwide.
In the UK
28 August 2018 |
The Future of Smartphones
“While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our "CONFIG.SYS" settings."
So said Dave Barry, the celebrated American satirist - who worked, it has to be said, on paper.
Much has changed with the internet since those early, creaky days. Back then, the public internet was powered by a few hamsters on wheels somewhere in what later became Silicon Valley.
Today, the internet, aka the Cloud, is an almost indispensable part of our lives - for better or worse.
Ofcom, the UK’s government-appointed media oversight group, published a report today on the changing media habits of this nation. It paints a fascinating portrait of the internet’s burgeoning power to change habits and lifestyles.
The study probably holds little comfort for telephone service provi
02 August 2018 |