I often say to students ‘describe, then analyse’. Well, how do you know which one you are doing and what the difference between them is? And while we’re about it, what’s the difference between method and methodology, hmmm? There is really no fundamental difference. Description always involves a choice of …
Computer security is the culmination of a series of subversions. Just as policing evolves in response to crime, so computer systems evolve in response to threats. When it comes to malware, while the code is clever, the social engineering is more persistent, and more depressing. Malware designers evolve their products …
Early in my career I researched smoking in areas of multiple deprivation in Scotland. At the time these were places where the social, economic and physical fabric had been severely weakened due to overlapping stressors. High crime, low income, low economic activity and widespread health problems were multiple challenges for …
🎵 In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive 🎵 Projects such as the Clock of the Long Now, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and deep time Nuclear Semiotics work with time horizons of millenia. These are about changing our time perspective in response to …
This post is about crime script analysis as a method of bridging micro- and meta- analysis of criminal activity. It lays out what crime script is and how it can be used to understand the relationship between the material criminal context and the patterning of criminal action. The origins and …
Some further thoughts on the long term future of illicit drug markets. 10-15 years ago most people buying drugs would do it from a known contact, arranged by telephone, handing over cash in person. Now a deal typically is arranged by social media, sometimes through the open web or darknet, …
The internet has been turned into a disclosing machine. Anonymous communication is rare and difficult to achieve. Digital worlds are characterised by affordances, the technological qualities that enable and promote some kinds of human action and which hinder or disable others. Some of these qualities are so fundamental we scarcely …
The future has arrived, said William Gibson. It just has not happened to you yet. Count yourself lucky. Participating in discussions on the future of policing gives me a chance to think about the role of futurology in social science. Futurology often shows up in a way that gives it …
<img> ‘Motherfuckin’ Critcal Thinking – How does that work?InsaneClownPosse.jpg'</img> A regular comment on students’ work from essays to PhD drafts is that they could improve by adopting a more critical perspective. Martin Booker explores it very effectively in his blog, Critical Turkey. He defines it as common-sense scepticism plus social …
One part of the academic skillset I have always thought made you a real academic is the ability to argue in wholly abstract terms. I have no idea how to do that and I never shall. I can talk about specific cases but debating scientific progress as characterised by Kuhnian …
