During the year 1814 over 96,000 people visited Bethlam Royal Hospital (also known as Bedlam), to laugh at the mental patients. The visitors felt justified in doing so as the patients were considered to be “already destined for hell”. Many clever people commented on the definitions and causes of madness. One could cast blame on [...]

Everything is getting so augmented and virtual nowadays – soon we will be able to live much of our lives in a totally unreal place, commanding experiences at the touch of a button, viewing through walls and skin effortlessly. It’s tremendously exciting – but sometimes I wonder what will happen next. I mean, what will [...]

In 1992, Gerald Tesauro created a programmeme called TD-Gammon at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Centre. The TD part stands for Temporal Difference (which is a type of learning system), and the Gammon part is taken from the game, Backgammon. TD-Gammon quickly became as competent as the world’s best human players, eventually beating them and [...]

I remember once walking off stage in Kiev where I had spoken in some detail about the necessity of courage when attempting to succeed. Someone approached me and asked whether I thought courage could be learned or whether you have to be born with it. That is a good question. My short answer was: “I [...]

The Nike Fuelband was just one of many examples within a movement known as ‘Quantified Self’. In simple terms this is basically a process of being aware of what we do and how it affects us. For instance, knowing that by running two miles you burn a certain number of calories, or that in a [...]

A long time ago when I started helping companies interpret how to use the Internet I was met with a significant level of negativity. During my tenure as the Chairman of the retail side of the British Music Industry, one particular retailer who thought that I was “representing the Internet” said that he would make [...]