Author: Oliver BroadbentPage 8 of 14
Anywhere versus somewhere. Contactable versus findable. Interchangeable versus valuable. Stranger versus friend. This analogue skill first emerged for me from asking a simple question. If you have left…
How driving an e-car has changed the way I think about driving, cycling and our relationship to the landscape through which we travel. I have recently started driving…
One day I hope this article will be printed in a book. But until then I can be fairly sure that you will be reading it on a…
Today I thought I’d share some of my motivations for the Analogue Skills project. 1 – An engineer’s fascination I am not anti-technology. I’m an engineer. I’m fascinated…
Watch the clouds. Streaming now. Telling a story of past, present and future. Of up there and down here. If you also live on the lump of rock…
What is real-world search, and why might it serve us in the digital world? The promise of a fully connected, digital paradigm is access to all the world’s…
Your loved ones. Your best friends. Your colleagues. Could you call them if you needed to? — This skill is an enabler for leaving the house with your…
Deleting apps and leaving your phone at home could be analogous to dismantling urban highways. I read earlier this week about the research that established a direct link…
Go to the station. Stand in the queue. Look at all the people and wonder where they are going. See leaflets in the rack for places you hadn’t…
This morning I’m writing about how action in the context ecological crisis will sometimes feel a long way from anything to do with nature. I wrote this week…
I originally wrote this post for the ‘Training on what to do After Declaring a Climate Emergency‘ alumni network, and I’m sharing it here too. For some start-the-week…
For years I have toiled to get bathwater out of the bathroom and into the garden to help reduce our water footprint. For many years, gravity wasn’t on…
I really enjoyed listening to the In Our Time episode on mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss this morning. As is sometimes the case with these podcasts, I hear about…
I heard this line in a BBC audio adaptation of King Lear for kids. “If I’m the fool, then what does that make you?” It struck a chord….
The daily traffic jam on my local high street has inspired me to think about a way to turn a traffic jam into an opportunity to a way…
Don’t spoil your idea with a terrible font. The environmental movement seems to be particularly prone this affliction. Once upon a time, people with the mindset that was…
Yesterday a council contractor rode up and down our street spraying weed killer on the pavements, grass and tree pits. I was dumbstruck. This is the biodiversity crisis…
On this afternoon’s walk we had the joy of arriving at a chalk stream. We had started high on the Ridgeway and descended quickly down through the Devil’s…
I drew this ash tree at Hazel Hill Wood last weekend. Though it rises opposite a bench where I like to have a morning coffee, I have never…
I had a revelation this morning as I walked down the hill to the newsagent: fear holds back my imagination. A fear of imagining the impossible; fear of…
From hospital waiting rooms to long-distance train journeys, the weather page is a great conversation starter for my daughter and me, full of questions about geography, mathematics, history,…
Planting parking spaces is a dismal affair. When you water them, the water just drains away. The rich soil underneath is capped. Parking spaces don’t flower; don’t make…
The biodiversity emergency requires us to change how we value and relate to the ecosystems that support us. Values shift when we change our habits. Habits are the…
By asking this question I make a choice about where the centre ground is. By framing the question I put the position ‘I will always own a car’…
Yesterday I was writing about what to do after declaring a biodiversity emergency. My conclusions was that the process starts with rethinking our relationship to our ecosystem. Not…
Many people I am speaking to are wondering what to do about the biodiversity emergency. The climate emergency has felt easier to understand. Crudely, we need to achieve…
This week I wrote about observing the seasons and how these might cause us to reflect on the patterns we adopt in our lives. Yesterday, I was exploring…
As someone who runs their own small business, I have to figure out how to work with fluctuating levels of client work. There are times when there is…
This week day equalled night. I see the seasons as sine and cosine waves. Peaks and troughs for different phenomena offset from one another. At the summer solstice,…
In my last post I asked how do I know if my ideas are any good? My answer was that a good idea is one that meets the…