December 12, 2020
One of the best tricks Clive James ever pulled was finding acceptance as a public intellectual in the UK. It’s not easy in a country in which it is possible to be too clever by half or even too clever for your own good. Stephen Fry continues to pull it off as does Mary Beard, but it’s a hell of a thing to achieve. In the UK it seems to rely on straddling at least two worlds. (more…)
December 10, 2020
From the archive. First published in October 
2015. It is perhaps the most common misconception of evolutionary theory that all animals are somehow evolving towards some end point – meaning us. This notion is perhaps best summed up when a sceptic asks: “If we have evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” The lesser of the two problems with this is its solipsistic assumption that humans are the pinnacles of life and that, if evolution were true, all species would eventually evolve into people. (more…)
December 4, 2020
When Donald Trump was pictured recently sitting uncomfortably at a table that looked like it had been retrieved from a skip, it provoked the sort of sneering commentary about furniture choices last seen when Dominic Cummings popped in to the Downing Street garden to deliver some self-serving blather from behind a rickety trestle table. (more…)
November 27, 2020
The new issue of IN Magazine is now online. This issue includes interviews with Chris Kane and Thomas Heatherwick; as well as pieces on: the new EDGE building in Berlin; the changing attitudes of CRE professionals to the office; the anthropology of workplace design; the interplay of networks and hierarchies; the need to create better cycling facilities; what the city and the office can learn from each other; a tribute to Enzo Mari and much more. Back issues can be found here.
November 17, 2020
The physician can bury his mistakes,—but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines. Frank Lloyd Wright’s eternal epigram is not just true for buildings. It also applies to the authors of books, especially those on the subjects most affected by this year’s pandemic. Speakers and blog writers can quietly inter the things they get wrong, while the book sits unchangeable on a shelf. Maybe behind a houseplant.
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November 10, 2020
Unbelievably for those of us who saw him as a personal hero, yesterday marked the 24th anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan. At the time of his death in 1996, the Internet was very much in its infancy but Sagan could see what was coming, including how we need to filter what is valuable from the deluge of information we now bob around in. Sagan put it like this: “all of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.” (more…)
October 14, 2020
If you want to determine the nature of anything, entrust it to time: when the sea is stormy, you can see nothing clearly. Seneca’s advice from nearly 2,000 years ago still rings true. (more…)
October 2, 2020
You’ve probably read and heard dozens, or even hundreds, of different viewpoints about the effect of the pandemic on the world of work. Most of them (until recently perhaps) have dished up one of the two binary options as part of a zero-sum game. Many are based on hackneyed ideas and expressed as clichés. (more…)
September 26, 2020
Some things will never change. IN Magazine continues to offer the best content you can find on the changing world of work. The digital edition of Issue 3 is now available and print copies will be posted out later in the week. (more…)
September 24, 2020
Derren Brown is clearly on to something. And if you’ve read his books you’ll know that what he’s on to is finding ways to tap in to our fascination with how our thoughts and actions can be manipulated using some well-defined and researched techniques and principles. Add in some showmanship and what you have is something that is indistinguishable from magic. It also gas something to say about some of the ways we think about workplace design and management.
Yes.
December 18, 2020
The shape of things to come for the world and the workplace
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design