Kester Brewin

If… If you can keep your place when all around you Are losing theirs and blaming it on viruses, If you can be trusted to be taken to the beach And have sand and ice cream thrown at you And still be dusted down and lose nothing, If you can wait months for me to [...]

When you get old, do you think you’ll be lonely? Do you think you’ll want someone to talk to and reminisce with? Naturally, someone has come up with a technological solution… the ‘Senior Companion.’ Very interesting piece in this month’s Prospect. The ‘Senior Companion’ is a ‘a conversational agent designed to interact with a person [...]

I came across this poster advertising ‘Black History Month‘ at a local school. Black History Month now lasts… 5 days. I don’t think the school have it wrong actually. As a teacher I can see that Black History Month has become a distortion which can actually serve to perpetuate the white Euro-centric view of history. [...]

Really good time last night at St John’s College in Durham, where I was taking part in the ‘Senior Tutors’ Forum’ – a space for all members of the St John’s community, from academics to freshers to post grads and ordinands to come together in a relaxed setting and chew over some issues. Last night [...]

I went to see The Social Network the other night, and have been mulling on it since. I have to say, I didn’t really fancy the thought of going to see a film about Facebook, but the reviews have been very good, and I’m a fan of Aaron Sorkin. It’s actually very funny, and very [...]

Another quite brilliant animation from the RSA – this time of a lecture by Sir Ken Robinson. It’s on changing educational paradigms, but the applications to changing theological ones are there for the taking. Beautifully done, and very very inspiring.

Excellent time at Apple 8 last night. Dr Luke Bretherton gave a very very good presentation on the place of social media in political action, framing it in terms of the co-evolutionary history of technology and political engagement/communication. The audio and slides should be up this evening. One of the most interesting points was about [...]

The story of the Chilean miners has been one of the most incredibly moving events I can remember. There’s something of the two-fingers-up-to-nature which is both exhilarating and troubling, and something of the deeply archetypal and transformative about the rescue… 33 Sliding, encased, through the bowels the earth thirty-three steel turds are evacuated into the [...]

The announcement that there will be no cap on tuition fees for English universities made me very sad today. Granted, our country’s finances are in dire straits. But it seems hugely short-sighted to try to claw back that money by raising costs for students, and setting them off in life with huge amounts of debt. [...]

I posted some thoughts on Friday about the problem of information coming too quickly for us to reflectively process it – and turn information into useful knowledge and wisdom. The analogy I used there was of a conveyor belt. When it runs slowly the packets come off at a speed that allows us to sort [...]