On being open

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In 1981 the Labour MP George Foulkes drafted the ‘Control of Space Invaders (and other electronic games) Bill’ because he thought it was addictive and causing deviant behaviour. The bill was defeated – but by only 20 votes in the House of Commons.Mr Foulkes was obviously very persuasive in his speech about the effects of games on the young:

“They play truant, miss meals, and give up other normal activity to play “space invaders”. They become crazed, with eyes glazed, oblivious to everything around them, as they play the machines. It is difficult to appreciate unless one has seen it for oneself. I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members who have not seen it should go incognito to an arcade or café in their own areas and see the effect that it is having on young people.”

It’s tempting to laugh, but recall that there are still serious voices urging control over childrens’ use of video games or online access in general. Anybody who watches children using online resources either in play or study will know how enormous the potential is for their learning and creativity. Of course, most schools ban mobile use and constrain use of social media and  internet access, and there are obvious risks to be managed, but it means that the enormous potential is untapped.

For the first chapter or so of [amazon_link id=”1909979015″ target=”_blank” ]Open[/amazon_link] by David Price, I was disappointed, although (because?) it had been praised so enormously by people I respect. The first part sets out the case that we are churning out mass produced children for the post-industrial age, and it isn’t working. The children are as bored as can be, the testing and league tables distort incentives for schools and discourage them from innovating, and by the time they get to 18 young people have been drilled into expecting to be told whatever they need to know to jump through the next hoop. No politician can risk being honest about this. Of course, this is all true. But it’s been known for years, decades even. (I even wrote about it myself in 2001.)

[amazon_image id=”1909979015″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Open: How we’ll work, live and learn in the future[/amazon_image]

But before long, I was thoroughly enjoying this book. Part of the enjoyment comes from agreeing so wholeheartedly with what David Price has to say about the need for a complete re-engineering of so many organisations – schools and businesses so that they face outwards, engage with all relevant communities, and above all enable their students or employees to become creative and enthusiastic learners. Schools in particular are set up to do exactly the opposite – testing of individuals is seen as the only way to measure educational success yet it actively discourages collaboration, a key skill in the workplace.

Price urges readers to just get on with remodelling their organisations. “We are beginning to realise that we don’t have to wait for those who govern locally or nationally to act on our behalf. We now have the means to act autonomously.” Of course there are constraints – schools have to jump over the league table and testing hurdles. But there’s scope to just go ahead and remodel the approach to learning beyond that.

The book touches on MOOCs, quoting Arthur C Clarke: “Teachers who can be replaced by a machine should be.” Price, like me, believes that some successors to today’s MOOCs will overturn universities in the way file-sharing did for albums and the record industry. Universities are vital civic and educational institutions but they will need to find new delivery models both in what they offer online and what they offer face-to-face.

There are lots of examples of open organisations in [amazon_link id=”1909979015″ target=”_blank” ]Open[/amazon_link]. I was especially struck by a quotation from Patrick McKenna of Ingenious Media: “We give a lot of our knowledge away… The reason we don’t worry about giving that knowledge away is because most people can’t implement what they know. The capital value of something these days is the ability to implement it rather than to create it originally.” This is a profound point with lots of implications.

Finally, the book notes the disjuncture between life and politics: “If schools are coming directly into competition with the learning opportunities available in the informal social space, it has to be said that this is a pressure which barely registers within the political discourse. The gaping hole in the middle of the public debate on schooling is that we can’t even agree on what schools are actually for.” Preparation for jobs? Child development? National economic competitiveness? Civic cohesion? Policy mushes all of these together and compels children to find their own way through the obstacle course in between them and the thrill of learning. Anybody with a teenager will know how thoroughly they’ve had all the enthusiasm beaten out of them by a decade of compulsory schooling for tests.

The book is slightly prone to educationalese but it’s very clearly written. Even if you start out agreeing – as I do – the many examples are interesting and useful. I’ll be giving this book to quite a few people, I think.

As a final treat, it introduced me to this fabulous course.

 

What does Joni Mitchell have to say about growth?

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Here is Andrew Sentance at the very successful ‘official’ launch last night of his new Perspective book, [amazon_link id=”1907994157″ target=”_blank” ]Rediscovering Growth: After the Crisis[/amazon_link].

Andrew Sentance citing Joni Mitchell

Andrew gave an excellent talk at the CPS, culminating in a line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” (The point being that average annual real GDP growth from the mid-1980s to 2007 in the UK was 3.3%, a much higher figure than I would have guessed.) To whet your appetite for the book, he’s also done a write-up in City AM this morning.

[amazon_image id=”1907994157″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Rediscovering Growth: After the Crisis (Perspectives)[/amazon_image]

The dollar, the unthinkable and the inevitable

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What is [amazon_link id=”0691161127″ target=”_blank” ]The Dollar Trap[/amazon_link]? In this book Eswar Prasad argues that the US grip on the global financial system has increased, not diminished, since the global (or North Atlantic, if you’re in China) financial crisis. The core of the argument is that foreigners (ie. non-Americans) have too much invested in dollar assets to permit a significant decline in the US currency. What Barry Eichengreen flagged in his book as the country’s [amazon_link id=”0199642478″ target=”_blank” ]Exorbitant Privilege[/amazon_link] continues (he too predicted there was nothing to knock it off its perch, despite the ‘rise and fall’ subtitle). The chart of the day in The Economist today, setting out the decline in emerging market currencies during the past nine months – accelerating just recently  – only underlines the asymmetry.

[amazon_image id=”0691161127″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Dollar Trap: How the U.S. Dollar Tightened Its Grip on Global Finance[/amazon_image]

It can’t last, of course. Danny Quah’s research (pdf) shows that the world’s centre of gravity for economic activity has shifted from the Atlantic firmly into Asia. [amazon_link id=”B00I124BKO” target=”_blank” ]Jim O’Neill argues that behind the BRICs are coming the MINTs[/amazon_link], and even a near-term decline in the growth of emerging markets will not reverse the shift. Yet as Prasad concludes, “The situation is rife with paradoxes.” The US relative status in the world economy is inexorably shrinking, it is a fiscal mess, the monetary taper will cause havoc, yet despite this fragility, it is hard to see what can dislodge the dollar from its perch.

I’m certainly not going to risk a prediction. But I would observe that in general fragile systems can persist in that state for a long time, but when the end comes, it’s often a sudden and catastrophic collapse. The unthinkable can become the inevitable.

I just wanted something to read

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“He just wanted a decent book to read.” That’s the creation story of Penguin Books, as recounted on the inside of a box of postcards of Penguin/Pelican book covers I got for Christmas, ‘he’ being the founder Allen Lane.

The precedent of Penguin’s various series of non-fiction books – the Pelicans, the Specials, the ‘modern economics’ series – along with earlier examples such as the Left Book Club is what led me to wonder if I shouldn’t dabble in publishing some books I’d like to read myself. They would cover economics and technology. They would be short enough for a train journey – in 1935, Allen Lane was fruitlessly looking for something to read on Exeter Station. The authors would be authorities in their field but would write accessibly, and they would have something to say, something with public policy relevance. So the Perspectives series was born, in association with the London Publishing Partnership.

The first four titles are Jim O’Neill’s The BRIC Road to Growth; Bridget Rosewell’s Reinventing London; Andrew Sentance’s Rediscovering Growth After the Crisis; and Julia Unwin’s Why Fight Poverty. There was a soft launch just before Christmas, a separate launch for Bridget’s book last week, and tomorrow night an event on Andrew’s book.

[amazon_image id=”B00I124BKO” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The BRIC Road to Growth (Perspectives)[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B00I11G7FW” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ][/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B00HZ1YU4Y” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Rediscovering Growth: After the Crisis (Perspectives)[/amazon_image][amazon_image id=”B00I124BLS” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Why Fight Poverty? (Perspectives)[/amazon_image]

I’m biased, but I think these four live up to the aim of having a clear and authoritative message. Jim argues that the shift in the world’s economic centre of gravity is not in the future – it has already happened, and global institutions need to adapt swiftly. Bridget makes the case for London’s ability to reshape its economy beyond the financial sector, but needs to focus on services other than finance and have in place the right housing, infrastructure and external connections to enable growth. Andrew says that although the UK economy is starting to recover, the lean years are not over yet and we need to get used to a much slower pace of growth than we enjoyed before the crisis. Julia convincingly shows how negative emotions – fear and guilt – get in the way of a rational set of policies to tackle poverty.

Upcoming titles include Dave Birch on digital identity as money, David Walker on when public outsourcing to the private sector works, and when it doesn’t, and Kate Barker on how to get more housing built.

It has been an educational experience publishing books. Dealing with Amazon is tough if you’re small, but of course Kindle editions are essential. It’s a crowded market: there are lots of short, pithy books, lots of small presses and lots of self-published titles out there. But so far, so good. I’ll post occasional updates.

Forerunners

Eric Schmidt is wrong – the robots are not drinking champagne

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I’ve not yet read [amazon_link id=”1480577472″ target=”_blank” ]The Second Machine Age[/amazon_link] by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee but am eager to do so. This question of what technology is doing to jobs and living standards is the issue of the moment. It’s obviously tempting for people to reach for the extremes (The robots are eating our jobs! We wealth-creators are being unfairly attacked!), when the truth will be nuanced, as it always is. Of course some comment has been more thoughtful. Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation wrote a measured survey of the debate (its balance belied by the headline The Robots are Coming!). This Wonkblog column (Will Robots Steal Our Jobs?) pushes back against the robo-phobia in a reasonable way by looking at the history of the first Industrial Revolution.

[amazon_image id=”1480577472″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies[/amazon_image]

What I do know is that Eric Schmidt is wrong. The Google chief presented this at Davos as “a race between computers and people”. On the contrary, it’s a battle between people and people. I see no robots drink champagne and nibbling canapes at the World Economic Forum. The technology creates the potential for great advances in living standards, almost always in the recent (past 250 years) past shared widely. The sharing is done by society, and the institutions that govern it.

One key institution is public education, so the masses have skills that complement technology rather than competing with it. Our education systems are struggling to adapt from the age of mass production to the modern industrial system. Another set of institutions consists of those that redistribute – collective bargaining, the welfare state since the mid-20th century, in need of reinventing. There is also the question of the ownership of the machines. The invention of the joint stock company is often overlooked as an important mechanism not only for raising capital but for sharing ownership among the growing middle class. There’s a very good book about the co-evolution of institutions and technology during the Industrial Revolution, [amazon_link id=”0226014746″ target=”_blank” ]The Institutional Revolution[/amazon_link], by Douglas Allen – well worth a read for those pondering what institutions might stop the triumph of the robots, or rather their gilded owners.

[amazon_image id=”0226014746″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World (Markets and Governments in Economic History)[/amazon_image]