Author: James Woudhuysen
Fracking with George Monbiot
Matthew Taylor brings together James Woudhuysen and George Monbiot for a head-to-head discussion on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for the the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Agree to differ‘.
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Digital native? There’s no such thing
It’s a myth that children are better at IT than adults
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International Intrigue and a Slow Web in China’s Dalian
Not a lot of Westerners have heard of Dalian, a major port and a centre for financial services logistics and higher education in northeast China
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People, your TVs are too big!
Earlier this year, Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat secretary of state for energy, hit a new low in proposals to deal with Britain’s inadequate and pricey energy supply.
Read the full article...Communicating the romance of innovation
James Woudhuysen delivered the Opening Keynote II ‘Communicating the Romance of Innovation‘ at the European Communication Summit in Brussels 2014
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IT’s not the future
The Second Machine Age sacrifices sense at the altar of technology
Read the full article...Fujitsu World Tour 2014: The human centric intelligent society
Fujitsu UK CTO Jon Wrennall talks to James Woudhuysen about how technology can help us meet the most human of needs: energy and food.
Read the full article...First World War: Mainstream Histories, Liberal Forecasts
James Woudhuysen spoke on ‘World War I: Origins, and Warnings for 21st Century‘ at the Leeds Salon, June 2014
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Seven reasons we should celebrate manufacturing
Commentators bemoaning the rise of ‘stuffocation’ miss the benefits manufacturing provides.
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Dangerous dogs or feckless owners?
If you own a dog in Britain and it hurts someone, you can now be sent to prison for five years.
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When telcos are terrible at communication
It’s time mobile operators fixed their networks – and their prose.
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Making the case for shale gas and oil
Both advocates and critics of fracking have it wrong. Also, both use the wrong word.
Read the full article...Publicly funded design support for SME manufacturers
Over the years, governments have put very little money into supporting product design among SMEs. Here’s a review of the results of their work.
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Banning fur is not a political statement
Call me sentimental, but I like animals. But I don’t like celebrity culture, and not just because I don’t know who many of the top celebs are nowadays. Don’t know, don’t want to know.
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British environmentalists love Germany’s energy policies
British environmentalists love Germany’s energy policies. Mistake!
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China in space: conquests, reversals – and revival
The success, relapse and then partial resuscitation of its lunar explorer Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, should awaken us to the broad advance China has achieved in space
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Design against food waste? Count me out
Trendy laments about food waste look unlikely ever to make much improvement on the poor incomes so widely offered in Britain’s creative industries.
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The Big Six aren’t to blame for high energy prices
Have Britain’s main suppliers of energy abused their monopoly position?
Read the full article...Energiewende: Deutsche Energiesklaven
Aus der Perspektive des britischen Innovationsforschers James Woudhuysen erscheint die deutsche Energiewende, wie ein skurriler Akt der Selbstversklavung. Anstatt auf Energiefreiheit setzen die Deutschen auf romantische Autarkieillusionen und obsessives Energiesparen.
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Obesity busybodies turn down the heat
Today’s moribund capitalism always tries to kill several birds with the same cheap stone.
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US firms and the ‘dash for cash’
American companies are grimly hanging on to cash, or returning it to shareholders, rather than investing in innovation
Read the full article...Computer games in China – some battles on screen, more in the market
The Chinese Communist Party won’t permit lurid content, but commercial competition in the games sector is pretty bloodthirsty
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Dementia: how health nudging works
The claim that dementia can be prevented by lifestyle changes was convenient PR – but remains unproven
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IT and US energy: grids go smart, armed forces go solar
The US Navy is more committed to solar energy supply than mainstream investors, who prefer to massage energy demand – downwards.
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The future of higher education and IT
There was a time when universities and higher education led many other sectors of the economy in their research about and use of IT. How do we get that position back?
Read the full article...Chinese supercomputers
If only briefly, China’s Milky Way 2 has taken the lead in the kind of machine that will be a vital to tomorrow’s heavy lifting in security, science and manufacturing
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Humanity: alive and well in the fast lane
The human spirit – motorists emphatically included – remains intrepid, indomitable, and impervious to differences of race, age or gender.
Read the full article...Letter from Lebanon: powering up for a brighter future
The Middle East needs new energy, not Europe telling it to save the stuff.
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East Asia: the new global hotspot?
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea may call for a ‘merciless, sacred, retaliatory war’ against the US imperialists and South Korean ‘puppet warmongers’ it blames for inching the Korean peninsula towards thermonuclear war. But China, despite distancing itself from its communist neighbour’s antics, also feels itself threatened by the US.
Read the full article...Six high-tech industries for 2020 and beyond
To tackle unemployment, unleash human talent and end global poverty, industry needs to embrace big ideas – here are six.
Read the full article...R&D: why failure is necessary
The US government’s reclassification of R&D as a sexy investment, not an iffy expense, is foolish.
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China: big shale reserves, but little fracking before 2020
When China finally gets fracking, there’ll be enough water to do the job. And fracking won’t kill the number of people coal does
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High Speed 2: an impoverished debate
The one thing worse than the UK government’s case for HS2 is the case being made against it.
Read the full article...A tax obsession with diminishing returns
Politicians fetishise tax avoidance because they have little clue how to generate wealth.
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A Seminal Panic about Defence IT: The Marconi Scam, 1913
100 years on, corruption at a UK telco contains lessons on Snowden, Huawei and globalisation.
Read the full article...Dangerous dogs: not that dangerous
Further proposed state restrictions on pets always mean yet more state restrictions on humans.
Read the full article...The robots are coming – but not fast enough
The claim that mechanisation is sweeping away jobs in a wave of innovation bears little relation to reality.
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China struggles to engineer robot revolution
Just as China’s strengths in cyberwar have stirred Western perceptions of a nation on the move, so its talents in robotics could be the stuff of nightmares.
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Time for some high-street innovation
Britain’s retail sector needs to stop worrying about the greens and learn to love new technology
Read the full article...From red peril to green panic
America’s military industrial complex once chased communists. Now it obsesses over CO2 emissions.
Read the full article...What London needs in terms of IT
Just three minutes on how the UK capital should apply IT for everyone’s benefit.
Read the full article...The right to bear 3D-printed arms
The US authorities are armed to the teeth, and we’re panicking about citizens printing out rubbish guns?
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The most innovative age ever? Five industries for 2020
Here are five key, job-creating yet high-productivity sectors which, with the help of design, could finally move into the 21st century. Published in Mandarin
我们处在人类最富创新力的时代吗？
中信集团2013年培训课
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Next killer app for smartphone: personalised healthcare
Will our smartphones one day tell us if a heart attack is on its way, and nanosensors in our bodies dispense the medicine to deal with it? Eric Topol thinks so.
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Big Pharma’s little critics
One defence of drug manufacturers, and three attacks on modern medicine, offer much. But none quite explains Big Pharma’s crisis of scientific and technological innovation.
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3D printing: Gimmick, revolution or spooks’ nightmare?
Special report 3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, is a subject that pumps out enthusiasts faster than any real-life 3D printer can churn out products.
Read the full article...Cities: what IT could do for London
James Woudhuysen joined this debate at the Global Futures event on Technology, Disruption and Convergence in February 2013. Speaking on the topic of ‘What IT could do for London‘, James challenges IT professionals to step outside the virtual world and change the capital physically.
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The idiocy of the New Catastrophists
The disparity between commentators’ warnings of doom and their proposed social solutions is hilarious.
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The Giants of Asia
2018 note: With their huge populations and buoyant growth rates, China and India are two of the economic and technological powerhouses of the twenty-first century. And though many seem to forget it after two lost decades, Japan is the third largest economy in the world, the second largest developed economy and the world’s largest creditor nation. Over the past 10 years, too, growth in Japanese GDP per head has also outpaced that of Europe and the US
Read the full article...Britain is headed for power cuts in the next 3 – 5 years
“Britain is headed for power cuts in the next 3 – 5 years”, says forecaster James Woudhuysen. So what is contributing to the problem of current low levels of energy production and what are the big challenges we need to tackle?
Read the full article...How to make blackouts a thing of the past
The key to providing for our energy needs is technological development, not sterile rows about energy sources.
Read the full article...Japan and China – could tension between them lead to war?
Japanese and Chinese diplomats met on Wednesday for urgent talks over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea.
Read the full article...Moby Dick Big Read: Chapter 24 – The Advocate
Moby Dick Big Read: Chapter 24 – The Advocate. James reads Chapter 24: The Advocate as part of The Moby Dick Big Read.
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Big trouble in the East China Sea
A row between Japan, China and Taiwan over a few small islands reveals the arbitrariness of international relations.
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Design alone can’t save UK plc
Making products attractive and user-friendly is a good idea, but it is no substitute for R&D and investment.
Read the full article...Innovation in energy: expressions of a crisis
Using academic, journalistic and statistical sources, this paper situates energy innovation in historical context before describing the current sclerosis of Western energy R&D.
Read the full article...Behind the froth in IT and innovation
James goes ‘Behind the froth in IT and innovation’ at TEDx Sussex University taking on two contemporary notions of IT – it’s all great or it’s all bad news.
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Smart Design: rethinking packaging
How electronic packs for pharmaceuticals work with mobile IT to improve patient adherence to medication regimens
Read the full article...Rare earths and not-so-rare tensions
The US government’s threat to take China to court for hoarding precious elements is more than just a trade dispute.
Read the full article...All this carbon-cutting is a waste of energy
Neither Boris Johnson nor Ken Livingstone is willing to deliver the uninterrupted, cheap energy London needs.
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The craze for design thinking
The historical and social reasons why hip designers talk of little else. Plus: elements of an alternative.
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Making a molehill out of a mountain
Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J Edgar Hoover is more about the man’s personal identity than his historical significance.
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The Next Trend in Design
Given the alacrity with which design managers uphold and then forget about future trends, it’s worth asking: Where do such trends really come from?
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Colour, brands and identity in tomorrow’s cities
In London, they brought the fluid neon colours back. For more than 50 years, the moving, illuminated electronic liquid of Lucozade, an energy drink, inspired motorists driving above down-at-heel Brentford, as they reached the western approaches of Britain’s capital at night
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Manias about change
Just because your email Inbox is brimming doesn’t mean that the real pace of change is accelerating. Panel discussion.
Read the full article...Fracking and Fukushima: our energy security fears
When I hear the phrase “energy security”, I reach for my revolver’.
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The end is nigh: is survival all we can hope for?
In their policies for energy and for the economy, British politicians hold up continued existence as the maximum goal we should strive for.
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Is Britain drowning in too much packaging?
The wrapping that our food, mod-cons and medications come in is not ‘evil’ – it is a product of civilisation.
Read the full article...The causes of Fukushima: report of Annual symposium of the World Nuclear Association, 2011
The power of the nucleus had little to do with What Went Wrong at the TEPCO nuclear reactors in 2011
Read the full article...Anna Hazare: apostle of political hygiene
Why India’s middle-class warriors against corruption aren’t so heroic
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BP’s Deepwater Horizon and Loren Steffy, Drowning in oil
BP became so obsessed with irrational management practices and petty health-and-safety measures that it overlooked the real safety of its workers
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Yuri Gagarin’s brave, brilliant leap into the dark
On the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight, James Woudhuysen praises Gagarin’s daring – and says we need more of it today
Read the full article...Budgeting for a dismal no‑growth future
For all their talk of innovation, the Lib-Cons are more concerned with pinching pennies than investing.
Read the full article...Big Pharma, small ambition
Pfizer’s decision to close its UK research facility was born of an industry-wide angst about medical discovery.
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Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation
In Britain and America, the phrase ‘big potatoes’ is used to describe things or events that are deemed significant. Published in Mandarin
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When Churchill starved India
Today, as Britain seeks diplomatic links with India and as Churchill is championed as a hero of multiculturalism, Madhusree Mukerjee’s shocking account of the exploits of the Empire is well worth reading.
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Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation
In Britain and America, the phrase ‘big potatoes’ is used to describe things or events that are deemed significant. Here is the English second edition
Read the full article...A very conservative approach to innovation
The Lib-Con coalition is more concerned with controlling behaviour than forging a brave, hi-tech future.
Read the full article...Forecasting at Sage World 2010
Forecasting the future – Is it possible to forecast the future? If it is, then why is there such contemporary scepticism towards it?
Read the full article...The UK if everything was nearly half as much bigger
A White Paper for BROTHER UK
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‘Lifestyles will have to be redesigned’
A Guardian journalist’s ranting about the ‘neglect, greed and human filth’ of modern China shows that new prejudices about a Green Peril have replaced old fears of the Yellow Peril.
Read the full article...An exhausted approach to the energy issue
The Lib-Cons ‘energy policy’ is to encourage people to use less of it rather than to generate more of it.
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An engaging tale, packed with myths
Christian Salmon’s book rightly notes the increasing use of narrative in modern life, but his ‘anti-capitalist’ instincts get in the way of understanding why.
Read the full article...Business models are no substitute for genuine innovation
James Woudhuysen can’t get excited about BUSINESS MODELS. They distract from the much harder work of scientific and technological innovation.
Read the full article...Election 2010: question everything on innovation!
James Woudhuysen explores the roots of the establishment’s neglect of scientific and technological innovation.
Read the full article...How the state is a roadblock to progress
Red tape-obsessed, visionless governments are holding back the kind of big and risky innovation society needs.
Read the full article...Letter from India
On a recent trip to India, James Woudhuysen collected a prize for Excellence in Innovation. As proof, he records the boom and dust of his travels.
Read the full article...Do we need a more venturesome economy?
It is true that in the world economy, R&D, laboratories and national competitiveness aren’t everything – but they count for more than Amar Bhidé suggests.
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The world needs abundant, cheap, clean energy
In an extract from their new book, Energise!, James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky argue that climate change is real, but the answer is to invest boldly in forms of power supply not moralise about personal consumption.
Read the full article...What’s so special about Dutch design?
In design one doesn’t necessarily accept ‘the problem as given’.
Read the full article...Still no clear policy on nuclear energy
New Labour’s commitment to nuclear is half-hearted at best, and goes hand in hand with more policing of our energy use.
Read the full article...State intervention is no substitute for innovation
British industry isn’t dead by any means, but if low-carbon jobs and protectionism trump new research and development, it soon will be.
Read the full article...New Labour’s power vacuum
The UK government’s obsession with energy self-sufficiency and renewables looks set to lead to blackouts in the next few years.
Read the full article...Who’s afraid of electric vehicles?
Green opposition even to eco-friendly electric cars shows that what environmentalists really dislike is travel itself.
Read the full article...The green man’s burden
Why is Greenpeace calling on the UK to set an example to nations like China, when the Chinese are cleaning up faster than us?
Read the full article...The Future Unwrapped: Media and Society, 2012+
The Media Futures Conference 2009 brought together leading thinkers and practitioners from around the media industry to share their pioneering work.
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What movies tell us about work
Movies, as everyone knows, form a powerful medium. So when we consider movies and the world of work, one thing ought to be obvious: to show a few classic movies at normal workplaces would be a useful innovation.
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Let’s go back to the Moon – and beyond
As the 40th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing approaches, backward attitudes here on Earth have tainted our view of lunar exploration
Read the full article...Gladwell: hero or zero?
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers reveals more about the author’s prejudices than it does the nature of success.
Read the full article...Risk-taking, R&D and the recession
Contributing to the spiked/CMP debate on the future of business, an innovation expert demands real wealth creation.
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Paying in cash: more than the strange pastime of a few
Reports of the death of cash are exaggerated. Here’s why
Read the full article...An R&D recession
Today’s economic crisis partly springs from years and years of under-investment in research and development.
Read the full article...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.
Read the full article...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.
Read the full article...Now is not the time to lose faith in R&D
Just a few years ago, Sun Microsystems sold a gadget that would make your business compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002.
Read the full article...The recession and the Politics of Fumbling
The consistent incompetence of politicians is no accident: it is testament to their lack of a cohering ideology.
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Read into it what you will
In the penultimate episode of the fourth series of the deservedly acclaimed HBO series The Wire, Tommy Carcetti, the fresh-faced, new, Democratic Party mayor of run-down Baltimore, is waiting outside the office of the Republican governor of Maryland.
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Britain’s airports: the case for three Heathrows
Why it makes sense to even out international flights over England’s green and pleasant land
Read the full article...Energising the debate about climate change
Energise! eschews the misanthropic green ideology of restraint and explains how human action can solve a human-made problem.
Read the full article...We need cheap, abundant energy
Here’s how we get it: more R&D, and fewer red herrings. Co authored with Joe Kaplinsky.
Read the full article...The CFLs are on, but nobody’s home
The mad green war on light bulbs won’t save much electricity – it’s about enforcing moral rectitude in the home.
Read the full article...Low-energy light bulbs – blaming us for energy consumption
BBC Breakfast: News and discussion piece on the phasing in of new low-energy light bulbs. During this item on BBC Breakfast, James Woudhuysen outlines his criticism of the government’s focus on consumer buying.
Read the full article...Global rivalries go green
Climate change will be a central part of government agendas in 2009 – and a rich source of diplomatic squabbles, too.
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Energise!
Before the financial crisis of autumn 2008, soaring Chinese demand for oil led some commentators to predict a rosy future for renewable energy.
Read the full article...New dawn rising for Eastern IT
The financial crisis in the West will strengthen the position of IT firms in the East.
Read the full article...Is man’s best friend a robot’s worst enemy?
Last month, Gartner vice president Jackie Fenn suggested that mobile robots are among the technologies that have “begun to be interesting to business”. So what’s happening in mobile and general robotics?
Read the full article...Nothing Romantic about environmentalists
The great nineteenth-century English poets waxed lyrical about nature, but they still believed in humanity – unlike today’s eco-pessimists.
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The nineteenth-century Greens
What would 19th-century Romantic poets like Wordsworth make of modern Greens? A half-hour broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Read the full article...Eco-imperialism is alive and well in the West
The West’s pleading with China to cut carbon emissions bursts with ulterior motives
Read the full article...Will insight lose out to inanity on the mobile web?
On the bus above my head, the new Vodafone ads tease me about Facebook on the move. I fight back despair and disapproval, and, instead, go on to learn more from conferences on mobile phones and new kinds of broadcasting.
Read the full article...Innovators must follow Frank’s example
To the flagship conference on innovation held by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta).
Read the full article...Experience trumps youthful exuberance
Back in October 2001, the American educationalist Marc Prensky suggested that there was a fundamental difference between people who had been born with IT and those who had not.
Read the full article...Solar energy for British homes?
BBC Breakfast: News and debate on a new government initiative around solar energy for British homes. James debates this topic with Stephan Hale, Director of the Green Alliance.
Read the full article...London 2012: where’s the Olympic Spirit?
Officials don’t care about sport for sport’s sake: they want the Games to boost British self-esteem, fix public transport and solve global warming.
Read the full article...Race to be green saps creative energy
I had to laugh. Was this new and epic Cabinet split about whether the Home Office really can and should equip the police with personal organisers in time for the 2012 Olympics?
Read the full article...The Electric Car Conspiracy… that never was
What a hit movie really tells us about innovation.
Read the full article...Whatever happened to self-reliance?
Invited to present some ideas to a very familiar UK service provider last week, I found few besuited representatives of the client at its head office.
Read the full article...Knocking the wind out of the energy debate
The UK government department in charge of energy is strangling urgently needed generation schemes in red tape, precaution and ceaseless consultation.
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Lara Croft gets down to business
It had to happen. IBM, still a venerable name in the computer industry, has taken yet another step to get down there with the kids.
Read the full article...Brown’s ‘get fit’ towns: Kim Jong-il would be proud
With its new towns that will force people to keep fit, New Labour is pushing an authoritarian health agenda that will be the envy of tinpot dictators.
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Clausewitz after 9/11
The Prussian master’s brilliant analytical method in On War provides richer insights into the contemporary wars against terrorism than anything his glib critics have come up with
Read the full article...Compulsive computer use
Can’t kick the IT habit? It’s time to stop worrying and state the case for free will.
Read the full article...Why greens don’t want to ‘solve’ climate change
Environmentalists are cagey about techno-fixes to climate change because berating mankind for its impact on nature is their raison d’être.
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Sputnik: when American fears went into orbit
When the Soviets put the first man-made satellite into space, 50 years ago today, the event launched an era of US self-doubt that continues to this day
Read the full article...Like it or not, coal is vital to Asia’s growth
Those calling on China and India to ‘kick the coal habit’, and opt for less sooty forms of energy, overlook the vast benefits of coal-use for those nations.
Read the full article...Innovation is more than combination
New technological breakthroughs are often a clever mix of old ones. But they also mark a leap named Progress.
Read the full article...Let’s research our own R&D record
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development may be right that the Chinese are sluggish on research and development. But the same is true of America and Europe.
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Interaction design and the failure of post-modernism
Review of Gerhard M Buurman, Ed, Total interaction: theory and practice of a new paradigm for the design disciplines. Birkhäuser, 2005, 367pp, 135 colour illustrations, 105 line drawings
Read the full article...It’s official: the masses are not gullible
A new British government survey suggests that lots of us have an agnostic or atheist attitude to the cult of environmentalism.
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This land is our land
If New Labour is serious about making homes more affordable, then it should allow members of the public to buy land and build homes where they please.
Read the full article...HDTV shows the way for online comms
Directed at entertainment, high-definition TV could also prove the turning point for video conferencing.
Read the full article...Three cheers for China’s ‘economic miracle’
Ignore the Yellow Peril view of Chinese economic growth as dirty and dangerous. There are good reasons to welcome China’s leaps forward.
Read the full article...Let’s fight back against the new Model Army
Like voodoo forecasts, computer models of climate change are being used to stifle political discussion and resign man to his Fate
Read the full article...Youth worship will put economy on its knees
The reasons given for venerating ‘tech-savvy’ Generation Y are not new and yet again fail to convince.
Read the full article...B2B e-merchants must raise their game
In the literature of innovation, 3M’s Post-it notes are regularly cited as an example of a great company making the most of a serendipitous innovation.
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PPE @Oxford. Wants a ceasefire. Fan of Stiglitz and Mazzucato 💤 Oh, and feted by the Sunday Times.
Got it, #GraceBlakeley !
The anger that inspires the web’s favourite socialist firebrand
Instead of buying from Japan at high cost, #China now makes its own ultra-low temperature high-frequency coaxial cables to get the signals out of #QuantumComputers
Origin Quantum, the maker, was just made the subject of US sanctions https://sc.mp/2guk2?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=3262995&utm_medium=share_widget via @scmpnews
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire