I like to think that I’ve always been a somewhat curious person, but through my participation in Leadership Calgary in 2009, I was challenged to take it up a notch, to broaden my focus and deepen my analysis. I was surprised by how enjoyable exploring new ideas could be. Like the child who frustratingly asks “…but why?” to every explanation his parent tries to offer, I discovered a bottomless well of questions—an unending line of inquiry.

I must confess that I have always had a bit of a pessimistic streak running through most of my worldview. The world was in trouble, and getting worse. Now, thanks to the appropriately titled work by Matt Ridley, I have started thinking that maybe things won’t turn out so bad, after all.

The rioting in London seems like a fitting backdrop for reviewing a book about societal inequality, although the timing of my review, and their riots, is purely coincidental. In “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better” we are exposed to a compelling stream of data and analysis that aims to show that whether you care about health, or crime, or education, or social mobility, (or…), you should be caring about social and economic inequality.

Right now, you and I are being watched. Google Analytics is recording every visit to this blog, including yours. Google has also read this posting, and all my other postings, adding them to the great big blog in the skyclouds. You and I, by our simple clicks, have generated a small trove of data that will need to be analyzed by algorithms processing millions and billions of similar interactions. The clever people designing these algorithms are the subject of Stephen Baker’s book “The Numerati”.