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Soft Machines, by Richard Jones

softmachines.org

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’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
105 from 1 Apr 2016 to 18 Oct 2026
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weekly (33 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 25

  1. The Welsh innovation economy and the new R&D devolution agenda
  2. On the devolution of Research, Development and Innovation funding: some tentative principles
  3. R&D, place, and developing regional innovation systems: some lessons from Greater Manchester
  4. My interview on Cylch – Alumni Wales
  5. The Sheffield Heavy Spring Trade
  6. Done Years Ago
  7. Moving beyond the dichotomy between pure and applied science
  8. R&D place and regional innovation systems
  9. Five glosses on Andy Burnham’s big speech
  10. Life, death and active matter
  11. On RD&I devolution
  12. UK science must deliver on its promise of economic growth
  13. How Sheffield became Steel City
  14. Andy Burnham, Manchesterism, and Reindustrialisation
  15. The slow road to digital matter
  16. Winds of change for UK science policy
  17. The place of UK business in the global R&D scoreboard
  18. The UK’s big bet on science and technology
  19. AI and the problems of protein folding
  20. UK science policy in transition
  21. Rock climbing and the economics of innovation (revisited)
  22. Anglofuturism and the Shock of the Old
  23. The decline of UK industry wasn’t caused by high energy prices, but they’re a big problem now, for what’s left of it
  24. Putting fusion power on the UK grid
  25. The enduring appeal of superintelligence, superabundance, and eternal life

2025 17

  1. The Year in Soft Machines
  2. On leaving the University of Manchester
  3. The UK’s continuing economic growth crisis
  4. AI and the manufacturing firm of the future
  5. Ownership, Control, National capability: learning lessons from the UK’s nuclear new build debacle
  6. UK Science in a post-liberal world
  7. Good reasons and bad reasons for supporting manufacturing (and some uncertainties)
  8. Sheila Howell Jones (1934-2025)
  9. The Economics Nobel, Joel Mokyr, and the UK’s changing landscape of innovation
  10. What makes a manufacturing superpower?
  11. Another Modern Industrial Strategy
  12. The civic university in hard times
  13. Moore’s Law, past and future
  14. The economic impact of AI: three scenarios
  15. Why productivity growth is important – Spring Statement 2025 edition
  16. The end of wage growth in the UK
  17. The world of business R&D (and the UK’s place in that world)

2024 12

  1. Ten years of banging on about productivity
  2. Taking Anglofuturism seriously
  3. Revisiting the UK’s nuclear AGR programme: 3. Where next with the UK’s nuclear new build programme? On rebuilding lost capabilities, and learning wider lessons
  4. Revisiting the UK’s nuclear AGR programme: 2. What led to the AGR decision? On nuclear physics – and nuclear weapons
  5. Research and Innovation in a Labour government
  6. Revisiting the UK’s nuclear AGR programme: 1. On the uses of White Elephants
  7. All things begin & end on Albion’s Rocky Druid shore
  8. How much can artificial intelligence and machine learning accelerate polymer science?
  9. Implications of Rachel Reeves’s Mais Lecture for Science & Innovation Policy
  10. Optical fibres and the paradox of innovation
  11. Deep decarbonisation is still a huge challenge
  12. The shifting sands of UK Government technology prioritisation

2023 14

  1. Science and Innovation in the 2023 Autumn Statement
  2. Productivity and artificial intelligence
  3. Robert Cecil Jones (1932 – 2023)
  4. Should Cambridge double in size?
  5. The UK’s crisis of economic growth
  6. When did the UK’s productivity slowdown begin?
  7. As times change, the UK’s R&D landscape needs to change too
  8. What the UK should – and should not – do about semiconductors
  9. What should the UK do about semiconductors? (PDF version)
  10. What should the UK do about semiconductors? Part 3: towards a UK Semiconductor Strategy
  11. What should the UK do about semiconductors? Part 2: the past and future of the global semiconductor industry
  12. What should the UK do about semiconductors? Part 1: the UK’s place in the semiconductor world
  13. “Science Superpower: the UK’s Global Science Strategy beyond Horizon Europe”
  14. 2022 Books roundup

2022 18

  1. Science and innovation policy for hard times: an overview of the UK’s Research and Development landscape
  2. Science and innovation policy for hard times
  3. From self-stratifying films to levelling up: A random walk through polymer physics and science policy
  4. The UK’s Innovation Deficit & How to Repair it
  5. Innovation, research and the UK’s productivity crisis
  6. Is the UK economy more R&D intensive than we’ve thought?
  7. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 7: Horizon Europe (and what might replace it) and ARIA
  8. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 6: UK Government Departmental Research
  9. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 5: UK Research and Innovation
  10. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 4: science priorities – who decides?
  11. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 3: the institutional landscape
  12. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 2: some overarching questions
  13. An index of issues in UK science and innovation policy – part 1: the strategic context
  14. Science and innovation policy in a new age of insecurity
  15. Levelling Up Research and Development
  16. What’s missing in the UK’s R&D landscape – institutions to build innovation capacity
  17. Video of my lecture on “levelling up” R&D
  18. Lessons from the gas price spike

2021 13

  1. Levelling up and R&D – the case for innovation deals
  2. When the promise of economic growth is not fulfilled
  3. UK science after the spending review
  4. With the Commons Science Select Committee on “The role of technology, research and innovation in the COVID-19 recovery”
  5. On the £22 billion target for UK government R&D
  6. Bleach and the industrial revolution in textiles
  7. Reflections on the UK’s new Innovation Strategy
  8. Fighting Climate Change with Food Science
  9. The Prime Minister’s office asserts control over UK science policy
  10. What next for UK Industrial Strategy?
  11. Novavax – another nanoparticle Covid vaccine
  12. Rubber City Rebels
  13. How does the UK rank as a knowledge economy?

2020 5

  1. Measuring up the UK Government’s ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution
  2. Nanomedicine comes of age with mRNA vaccines
  3. UK Industrial Strategy’s three horsemen: COVID, Brexit and trade wars (and a fourth horseman of my own)
  4. Talking about industrial strategy, “levelling up” and R&D
  5. On the UK’s chemicals industry

2016 1

  1. Against Transhumanism: the delusion of technological transcendence