This was an article I wrote in 2001, but it seems appropriate to repeat it…

I have been following your articles on the various arguments between those (American) economists who demand greater transparency in financial markets as a solution to recent instability, and those who believe in a supra-national regulator.  (Gordon Brown, yourself, me).

It reminded me of the description of Physics at the beginning of James Gleick’s book on Chaos theory.  “Physics”, he said, “has been going down a reductionist cul de sac in which more and more is known about less and less.”  The insight of chaos theory is that in the ‘natural’ world, there are things that are inherently unknowable because small changes have large effects in conditions of instability.

It therefore follows that during periods of economic instability one will never be able to disclose sufficient information to overcome the danger of the system running out of control.  Only regulatory institutions with the power to manage periodic crises can give us the security we all crave.

All three major political parties have endorsed the plan to invest £60bn in a high speed rail link that will shave minutes off the journey time of a few very rich people travelling between London and Scotland.

The alternative would be to invest that same amount amount of money to enable the UK to implement Optic fibre Internet to about 96% of all homes and businesses.

Now at the moment, a typical ADSL internet connection will deliver about 5Mbps downloads and a measly 0.8 Mbps.  With an optic fibre network we would be able to get something around 50Mbps upload and download speeds.  What impact would that have?

• Suddenly we can have high quality video conferencing to a large HD screens without any lagging on the sound.
• Cloud computing becomes a reality and that will create yet another technology revolution.
• VPN and all sorts of desk top sharing applications that currently have to compromise quality because of bandwidth, would alter the way we manage our businesses and undertake learning.
• Interconnected appliances
• and of course, instant downloadable TV
• Plus many other advantages that we cannot even imagine yet

There are countries that are already well advanced in creating an Optic Fibre infrastructure, like South Korea and Scandinavia.  But in these times of austerity the British government has decided to invest heavily in the infrastructure that made that made us great at the time of the Victorian Empire.

This is being done in our name, but it should be stopped.