Latest thinking

The Third Industrial Revolution

Blog

03 Jan 2012

Jonathan Rowson

They say a rainy day is no match for a sunny disposition, but London's wet, windy, monochrome sky is enough to make the cheeriest soul wish they were elsewhere.

New year, new internship opportunities

Blog

03 Jan 2012

Benedict Dellot

As part of the RSA's rolling programme of internship opportunities, we are pleased to announce that we have three new paid positions opening up in early 2012. These are designed to give successful applicants the chance to experience what it is like to work within a fast-paced research organisation, to get to grips with emerging theories and concepts in different fields, and to hone their abilities in everything from fundraising, to project management, to the research itself.

The Hope of Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011

Blog

19 Dec 2011

Jonathan Rowson

Obituary writers must be busy at the moment. I wanted to speak for the man in the middle of a recent obituary 'sandwich', caught between atheist icon and global intellectual Christopher Hitchens and North Korea's great leader, Kim Jong-Il who was immortalised by his puppet caricature in Team America.

Meat, deceit and saving the world

Blog

09 Dec 2011

Meat production puts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than transport. Estimates suggest that the production of meat accounts for 18% of carbon emissions, compared with 14% from transport. In their hot-off-the-press report about taxi drivers’ fuel efficiency, my colleagues Jamie Young and Jonathan Rowson argue that there is a lack of salience when it comes to climate change. This comes across pretty clearly in the British Social Attitudes Survey which came out this week.

Sing! Sing! Sing!

Blog

06 Dec 2011

Wellbeing is all the rage. Ever since Lord Layard put happiness on the political agenda, the wellbeing thing has been a hot topic. In the academic world, there’s wellbeing research centres and specialist groups (like this one at LSE), think tanks are all over it (NEF’s wellbeing centre, for example), there’s charities devoted to promoting wellbeing (like Action for Happiness) and it’s hit the public imagination with magazines such as the imaginatively titled Wellbeing growing in popularity all the time.

Neoteny, the noosphere and being a neophyte

Blog

05 Dec 2011

I’ve had some interesting material land in my inbox today, including two emails containing words I’ve never seen before. Perhaps I ought not to admit such ignorance, but the meanings of both words have turned out to be pretty fascinating and I wouldn’t want to pass up the opportunity to share them here out of some kind of intellectual vanity.

9 out of 10 polar bear hunts end in failure

Blog

01 Dec 2011

Jonathan Rowson

I was completely captivated by David Attenborough's Frozen Planet the other night, and particularly absorbed watching a polar bear mother, who hadn't eaten for six months, running out of breast milk for her two cubs, trying to track down an evasive seal.

No sexism in sport. Yeah, right.

Blog

30 Nov 2011

I don’t watch television very often, not through any deliberate decision not to, but just because I tend to be doing other things in the spaces when the TV might come into its own. But on Monday evening, I found myself in front of The One Show, which had Gary Lineker on as a guest. The main story was the unveiling of the shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

Calvinism, confirmation bias, county councils and the Big Society

Blog

22 Nov 2011

Matthew Taylor

I don't have any Calvinist influences in my life or family history, so it has always struck me as odd that I seem to be an instinctive believer in predestination. There is a Margaret Atwood novel - I think it's Bodily Harm - in which she describes a strongly Calvinist community in which the sense of fatalism in the face of God’s plan led people to assume good fortune would sooner or later even out. 'For us' I recall Atwood writing 'good luck was bad luck'.