Rebooting the wetware

Great to be part of the rebooting Britain release – even if I only managed to get there for the afternoon (due to having to do a surgery in the morning). And great that Patient Opinion got some good mentions from Jeremy Hunt, Lee Bryant and Charlie Leadbetter.

But was it a good day? Some people thought it didn’t reach far enough. But for me it was great to hear people like Lee holding forth on democracy. And Howard Rheingold who has been riding this territory out west for as long as anyone can remember and who signposted so much of it for so many of us.

I suppose at root the re-booting metaphor is a bit too easy to be a really useful key though. Turn off, wipe clean, switch on again is really not how humans or institutions work. A good hook to hang interesting stuff round but actually changing how the wetware works is much more interesting, absorbing and long-term than building the software and hardware.

And of course you can see Patient Opinion's contribution to the essays at The Independent.