The Impact of “Ambient Findability”: What happens to memory, authority, & education, when everything is instantly findable? What impact will it have on ‘knowledge’, and on trust in personal relationships? Author Peter Morville answers some questions and hints at others…
Info-overload harms concentration more than marijuana
(thanks to Trent for both links)
With sorrow I note the passing of Lord Cooke of Thorndon. He stood equal with England’s Lord Denning as my favourite activist judge when I was a law student.
His immediate political impact was to clarify the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation that referred to its principles being upheld. But his particular impact on me was to assert that the strength of the common law may stand as a bulwark against an ostensibly sovereign Parliament. That is,
…it is arguable that some common law rights may go so deep that even Parliament cannot be accepted by the Courts to have destroyed them. (Fraser v State Services Commission [1984] 1 NZLR 116)
and,
I do not think that literal compulsion, by torture for instance, would be within the lawful powers of Parliament. Some common law rights presumably lie so deep that even Parliament could not override them. (Taylor v New Zealand Poultry Board [1994] 1 NZLR 394 at 398)
I do not know what Lord Cooke thought, but to me his dicta were an appropriation of Christian covenant structure. Or, put another way, they rest on the authority of God’s common grace. Certain rights belong to humans because God is in covenant with them, and by God’s grace those rights have been continually recognised – especially in societies influenced by the gospel. No body (such as Parliament) should be held able to abrogate such deep rights.
Whether or not Lord Cooke would have built his case that way, it seemed to me a deeply significant position to hold. And I have greater confidence in New Zealand’s ‘legal capital’ – its store of wisdom – because of it.
A fuller discussion of Lord Cooke’s influence on this point may be found here.