A polemical approach: James in former times
Polemics and disagreements are nowadays felt to be disagreeable. But they can clarify ideas, and bring light as much as heat
PICTURE CREDIT: Lewis Woudhuysen

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28 June 2009 | Management Today, July 1989

One small step

It took the Apollo mission for man to come to terms with the mechanics of himself and of the man machine interface. Today, space has other lessons to offer, but it remains instructive to designers on Earth 32kB

26 June 2009 | spiked review of books

Gladwell: hero or zero?

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest bestseller, Outliers, has its moments. In the end, however, its treatment of why individuals and groups ‘make it’ in the worlds of work and education operates as an up-market compilation of liberal prejudices

June 2009 | Special to Woudhuysen.com

Paying in cash: more than the strange pastime of a few

Contactless debit cards, the decline of cheques and the rise, in Korea, of payments made by mobile phones: all raise the spectre of a cashless Britain. But that will never happen 164kB

15 June 2009 | spiked

Risk-taking, R&D and the recession

The woeful level of Western investment in R&D reveals much about the capitalists’ state of mind

27 May 2009 | spiked

An R&D recession

Today’s economic crisis springs from years and years of under-investment in research and development

19 May 2009 | Building Sustainable Design

Interview on climate change and real responsibility

Public guilt about climate change is a waste of energy

1 May 2009 | spiked

The myth that New Labour is pro-nuclear

Everyone from big business to greens imagines that British government policy favours nuclear energy. It doesn’t

8 April 2009 | Computer Weekly

IT, youth, work and play

Interview at a conference on government and mobile IT

7 April 2009 | spiked

A Fu Manchu of the dot com age?

Claims that Chinese cyber-spies are plotting world domination through the World Wide Web are greatly exaggerated

30 March 2009 | Special to Woudhuysen.com

Political writing: long live the cliche

Andrew Rawnsley, one of Britain's leading political commentators, offers an excellent – if inadvertent – lesson in how to repeat tired old images and mangle metaphors, too. I've counted more than 30 lame phrases, and have highlighted them in yellow 76kB

26 March 2009 | Computing

Now is not the time to lose faith in R&D

If regulators get the better of innovators, it will only serve to prolong the recession

24 March 2009 | New Civil Engineer

Science, engineering and the two Cabinets

How many of our leaders in New Labour and the Conservatives have any background in technology or business?

19 March 2009 | spiked

The recession and the Politics of Fumbling

The consistent incompetence of politicians does not come by chance: it's a symptom of their lack of a cohering ideology

11 March 2009 | New Civil Engineer

Airports: the case for three Heathrows

Why it makes sense to even out international flights over England’s green and pleasant land

February 2009 | spiked

Praise for Energise!

A top sociologist has kind words for what is in fact a searing polemic

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Taking issue 
  The initiative for Innovation has passed from West to East. Obviously the West still brings out innovations; but the fear of the new is much greater in Europe and the USA than it is in Asia. The West would rather innovate in the realm of Brands, Design and Play than in the realms of Work, Construction or the Public Sector