Knowing and Making

Found by Google Alerts on a blog called " Christians in Context ": Let me sketch one point this book defends. Heidegger argued that modern technology in its very essence is radically differentiated from pre-modern technology. He calls pre-modern technology technique, and goes on to explore what this newly-arrived word 'technology' actually signifies. To risk oversimplification, here is what technology means: it is the interpenetrating of knowing and making , the co-penetration of science and art, which for the modern world means that our science is inescapably 'folded' not just toward increasing information (i.e. describing the world, its causalities, etc) but also increasing power over the world. I never knew this was in Heidegger - but a followup search shows me that it's a phrase commonly ascribed to him (presumably in translation). Anyway, it perfectly encapsulates why I named this blog. My first reading of the paragraph above was that it is entirel...

This week's word cloud from the economics blogs. I generate a new cloud every Sunday, so please subscribe using the RSS or email box on the right and you'll get a message every week with the new cloud. The words moving up and down the chart are listed here . I summarise around four hundred blogs through their RSS feeds. Thanks in particular to the Palgrave Econolog who have an excellent database of economics blogs; I have also added a number of blogs that are not on their list. Contact me if you'd like to make sure yours is included too. I use Wordle to generate the image, the ROME RSS reader to download the RSS feeds, and Java software from Inon to process the data. You can also see the Java version in the Wordle gallery . If anyone would like a copy of the underlying data used to generate these clouds, or if you would like to see a version with consistent colour and typeface to make week-to-week comparison easier, please get in touch.

If you get the email version of this blog you might not have seen the pictures with yesterday's review of the Old Bridge Inn . Do go back and have a look at them if not.

I spent Christmas Day with family at the Old Bridge Inn in Aviemore, in the most beautiful, spectacular snowfall I've ever seen in this country. Aviemore is a mountainside town on the River Spey (home of many of Scotland's malt whiskies ) with skiing and snowboarding in the Cairngorm mountains in winter, and rafting in summer. I haven't been joining in the all-action activities (my comparative advantage is definitely in the intellectual rather than physical factor of production, which reminds us that comparative advantage can accrue purely from an inability in one attribute with no compensating capability in another ). But if I can't ski, I can at least appreciate beauty. The whole landscape is covered with a thick, pristine blanket of snow, the sky is blue and the sunlight makes the world shine like a diamond. Best of all is the Old Bridge Inn . A warm corner in the midst of the snow, with lovely, comfortable rooms, a log fire in the bar, amazing cooking fro...

From this article (h/t Marginal Revolution): The top 100 authors dominate sales. As The Bookseller has explained, some 100,000 titles are published every year, but these authors account for £1 in every £6 spent on books and a fifth of revenue.  What does the Telegraph think is the difference between "revenue" and "£ spent on books"?

Scott Sumner thinks it's just a coincidence that the increase in excess bank reserves in the US is almost exactly the same as the amount of the government's discretionary fiscal stimulus - $800 billion. And yet, the increase in the Bank of England's balance sheet through quantitative easing so far - £180 billion or so - is also the same as the UK government's budget deficit this year. Doesn't it make you wonder? Now it's true that there is no necessary link between the two. In "normal" times, government borrowing and central bank easing are not necessarily correlated - quite the reverse, in many cases. Public borrowing is generally inflationary; so a monetary authority with a constant inflation target is likely to counteract that by raising interest rates or otherwise reducing the money supply. However, now is different. Inflation and growth are exactly what we need, and the fiscal and monetary authorities are acting together to try to create t...

I was on BBC World this morning to discuss the latest UK GDP figures and why the UK is the last major economy still in recession (hoping to get a clip to upload later). Here is a summary of my views, some of which I got across in the interview. Any of these could be an article in themselves, but there isn't much time to discuss them on an hourly business news update! Our recession has been worse mainly because we are dependent on the financial sector. We did very well out of this before the recession, but having reached a higher peak we had further to fall. However, employment figures have been relatively very healthy, meaning that the pain of the recession has been less than it could have been. Also, fiscal and monetary action have mitigated the risk of a deeper depression. We are now gradually edging out of recession but there is a risk that tax rises and government spending cuts will put a brake on growth. To combat this, continued aggressive monetary policy is needed. Becau...