nextwavefutures

[nextwavefutures]

12 days of winter songs

Songs of the season: 12 days of winter songs. New post at Around The Edges

Over at the folk music blog I contribute to, we have been running a series called ‘12 Days of Winter’ which celebrate folk songs about this time of the year. It mixes up religious songs, Christmas songs, and seasonal songs. The series finishes tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. You can find all the posts so far—all 12—at this link. The count down to #1. (Father Xmas in a wassail bowl, Illustrated…

[nextwavefutures]

Big Food, Big Tobacco, and ultra-processed foods

Big Food, Big Tobacco, and ultra-processed foods. New post at The Next Wave.

I try to keep track of developments in the food sector over at my Just Two Things newsletter, and Marion Nestle’s blog recently signalled a striking development in the world of ultra-processed foods. An extensive selection of the companies that make them have just been served with a lawsuit in an American court. This is the first time that this has happened. The list of defendants is quite…

[nextwavefutures]

States have a shelf life of about 200 years

States have a shelf life of about 200 years. They get worse at recovering from shocks over time. Post at The Next Wave.

I gave a talk on collapse earlier this autumn to the community of futurists that is co-ordinated by DEFRA, the British government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It was based on an article I wrote earlier this year, and discussed here in March. The presentation slides are linked at the end of this post. One of the things that popped up in the chat while I was talking…

[nextwavefutures]

‘American Gigolo’ and ‘80s noir

‘American Gigolo’ and ‘80s film noir. New post at Around The Edges

I thought American Gigolo was a fantastic film when I saw it as a new release in the cinema in 1980. I knew something of director-writer Paul Schrader’s work and influences, and something of film noir, and it lived up to expectations. I hadn’t seen it since, and I wondered—when I saw that Channel 4 was showing it—how well it would have aged. The glossy look, the Armani suits, the Giorgio Moroder…

[nextwavefutures]

Creating paths for change

Jim Ewing’s book Transforming Uncertainty is a rich set of tools to help groups create paths for change. New post at The Next Wave.

I’ve been looking forward to the publication of Jim Ewing’s book Braving Uncertainty (Triarchy, 2024) ever since Graham Leicester referenced his work in a few pages of his book Transformative Innovation. Ewing was, until his death in 2014, a member of the group of practitioners convened by Graham at the International Futures Forum in Scotland. The manuscript for Braving Uncertainty was drafted…

[nextwavefutures]

The great fertility shift

Fertility rates are falling everywhere. The best explanation is that women don’t want to have so many children. But the looming economic challenges are enormous. New post

Nicholas Eberstadt had an article in Foreign Affairs on what he calls “The age of depopulation”. (It seems to be outside of their paywall). It would be more accurate, of course, to call it “the coming age of depopulation—we’re not quite there yet. But when global population does decline, it will be the first time since the Black Death, 700 years ago, that global population has fallen. Unlike the…

[nextwavefutures]

Farewell to the electro-folk band Niteworks

Farewell to the Scots electro-folk band Niteworks—going out in style. New post at Around The Edges.

I wrote this post for Salut! Live’s Facebook feature, Artist of the Week, which celebrated the work of the Scots band Niteworks, who are signing off in style in Glasgow this weekend. Niteworks’ last London gig A few months ago a friend asked me about bands that had crossed over between dance and folk music. He was a folk fan who had grown up with ‘90s dance music. It’s quite a short list. Simon…

[nextwavefutures]

Six narratives about Trump’s election

Six narratives about Trump’s election—from the short-term to generational timescales. new (long) post at The Next Wave.

Elections are always complicated things, although pundits sometimes try to pretend that they’re not. In this post I run through some different narratives or ‘explanations’ of Trump’s victory that I’ve noticed or heard since Wednesday and pull out a quote or add some commentary. New Yorker cover, November 2024 1. It’s the economy, stupid One of the more persuasive charts on the election was…

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‘In Which We Serve’: it’s everybody’s war

‘In Which We Serve’: the point of Noel Coward’s naval drama is that it’s everybody’s war. New post on Around The Edges.

I watched In Which We Serve (1942) after seeing a sequence about the film in a documentary, Mad About The Boy, about Noel Coward. The documentary first: I don’t think I had understood how big a star Noel Coward was in the middle of the 20th century, since I had remembered him from my childhood only as a Las Vegas entertainer. In Which We Serve was written, produced, and co-directed by Coward,…

[nextwavefutures]

Soft simulations and the next attack on the Capitol

Soft simulations, game design, and the next attack on the Capitol. New post at The Next Wave

Storyville: War Game was shown last week in the UK on the BBC, and is a documentary film about ‘gaming’ the future. In fact, it is gaming a very specific future: after the violent attack on Capitol Hill in 2021, it games the 2024 American Presidential election in the event that the election result is disputed. It was directed by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber: It’s on BBC iPlayer, for readers who…

[nextwavefutures]

Dusty among the royalty

Dusty among the royalty—a star in decline finds a way to connect with her audience. Her Royal Albert Concert, 1979. New post at Around The Edges.

The film of Dusty Springfield’s 1979 concert at the Royal Albert Hall is billed as “the pop diva at the height of her career”. But although royalty was in attendance, in the shape of Princess Margaret, the description is definitely not right. By 1979 Dusty was on a long slow slide from her last big hits in 1971. Her career had been beached musically by punk and disco. Her personal life was…

[nextwavefutures]

Designing organisations that work

Designing organisations that work—the lessons of Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model for organisational design. New post on Dan Davies’ book The Unaccountability Machine.

Nine chapters into his book The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies makes a little self-deprecatory joke. He had intended to write a detective mystery about cybernetics, he says, but has spent eight chapters describing the construction of the murder weapon. The question that Davies starts out with is about how it is that the modern organisation has become structured in structured in such a way…

[nextwavefutures]

The Glass Pearls

Emeric Pressburger is best-known for his long film collaboration with Michael Powell. But his 1960s novel, The Glass Pearls, is a dark surprise. New post on Around the Edges.

The Glass Pearls is one of two novels written by Emeric Pressburger after his long film-making partnership with Michael Powell was dissolved. It’s an extraordinary book, for several reasons. Image by The Reading Den, whose review is here. The first is the subject matter. The novel was published in 1966, and is about a Nazi war criminal living under an assumed name in a London boarding house, 20…

[nextwavefutures]

Everyone goes to Rick’s

Everyone goes to Rick’s. And so do all of film’s narrative archetypes. Watching Casablanca again: new post at Around The Edges.

It’s possible, even probable, that everything that there is to say about Michael Curtiz’ 1942 film Casablanca has already been said. Bogart and Bergman, as Rick and Ilsa, and Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Heinreid, the love triangle at the heart of the story. And Casablanca itself, thronging with Second World War refugees trying to get to America, under the keen eye of the corrupt chief of…

[nextwavefutures]

Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’

Suspicion is set in Britain, but it is one of Hitchcock’s American films. Johnny Aysgarth is played by Cary Grant, and he is posh but poor, chancing his arm and using his charm, and quite a lot of class privilege, to get by. Joan Fontaine plays Lina, who has money. So it’s a classic Hitchcock story. (Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Suspicion) As the plot unfolds, Aysgarth owes his cousin…

[nextwavefutures]

Basho, the haiku, and the Narrow Road

Basho, the haiku, and the Narrow Road—new post on Around The Edges.

Basho’s book Narrow Road to the Deep North is about a 1500-mile walk up one side of Japan, across, and down the other side, towards the end of the 17th century. He was 45 at the time, but not ageing well, and he was mostly accompanied by his ‘disciple’ Sora. The roads were not good and there were potential dangers.  His walk was intended to acknowledge his literary influences, and Basho prepared…

[nextwavefutures]

Keeping students in school, instead of failing them

18% of Britain’s school students leave school without any qualifications—all but unemployable. A new coaching and mentoring programme seems to make a difference. New post at The Next Wave.

I was at a meeting at Mansion House in London earlier this month organised by New Capital Consensus, which is a research group looking at how “to identify the behavioural, political and regulatory levers necessary to release billions of pounds of private, long-term investment capital to green the UK economy and tackle structural inequalities.“ I’ll come back to this macro economic question on…