Category: Ideas
Australia’s Bushfire Crisis
It is difficult to talk about the current bushfire crisis facing Australia with anything close to the objectivity required of a journalistic article. As my home, I have struggled to come to grips with the scope of the disaster that has occurred here. For a long time, we have had the benefit of sitting on ...
4 Ways to Innovate: Lessons from the Global Scholars Symposium
In June 2019, Rhodes House hosted the Global Scholars Symposium. The theme was Cultivating Innovation. Over the two-day event, speakers from all over the world talked about different ways to innovate. I left the event with a newfound appreciation for innovators, and several take-home messages. According to the dictionary, to innovate is to “make changes in ...
Fireworks Fly at Jeff Koons Event: Should An Artist Credit Their Assistants?
Fireworks flew in question time yesterday at an event celebrating the internationally acclaimed artist Jeff Koons. Visiting Oxford to promote his exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Koons was questioned by the Emeritus Professor of Art History Martin Kemp, before receiving mostly hostile questions from the live audience. Koons is best known for his reproduction of ...
United Kingdom Considers New Laws: Age Restrictions for Facebook Likes, Snapstreaks
The recent call for age restrictions on likes and streaks on Facebook and Snapchat is long overdue, but does not go far enough. People of all ages should be protected from the psychological damage caused by likes, streaks and other online ‘reward’ mechanisms used by giant social media companies to make us all addicts. Likes, ...
Long Working Hours Are Making Australians: Unproductive, Mentally Ill, Physically Ill
Research indicates working more than 48 hours a week is associated with significant declines in productivity, more mistakes and more mental health problems. Yet the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons reckons working up to 65 hours a week “is appropriate for trainees to gain the knowledge and experience required”. It’s an attitude that explains why a 2017 audit found ...
Top UK universities remain unreachable for 70% of students
Eight top schools have as many Oxford and Cambridge admissions as the next 2894 UK schools combined, according to a new report by the Sutton Trust. The Trust suggests that little has changed regarding access to opportunity at Oxbridge since its last report in 2011. For nearly three quarters of school leavers across the UK, ...
Can creativity SAVE your job from automation?
Around 40% of all law jobs are at risk of automation, according to a 2016 Deloitte report. Traditional skills expected of law graduates are increasingly going to be undertaken by new AI-driven software. Basic skills such as database research and document drafting are already being automated by large Australian law firms. The race is on ...
How to Keep Learning for Life: Learning After School and University
When we talk about learning, we’re often talking about school or university or a workplace training seminar. But to be a lifelong learner is to understand how to learn by yourself, outside of an institution, after that stage of life is over, without any teacher to show you the way. Learning for life, is about ...
The Problem with Ping Pong: How Companies Psychologically Manipulate Employees into Working Longer Hours
Ping pong. Bean bags. Free lunch. I've spent two months researching the psychological tools companies use to get employees to work longer hours for free. This builds on my previous work on social psychological research and law including my first book: Us vs Them: A Case for Social Empathy. In my research, I've discovered that companies use the same techniques ...
Public Talks in Sydney
It is nearly time for Vivid Sydney, and I thought in light of that I'd share some of my thoughts on the current state of public talks and events in the city. For a long time there has been an underground movement of public intellectuals in Sydney, trying to fight back against the corporatisation of the ...
