There's always a miasma of misinformation emerging from the higher education sector as to which are the 'best' courses to take. My advice would always be to ignore the perceived wisdom and look for the most reliable evidence on the ground.

For a long time many believed that there would be an automatic adjustment and counted on a rapid increase in the wages of the emerging nations on our advances in technology and the costs of transport preventing disruption. But this reassuring analysis is out of date.

The way the world is going it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.

In emerging democracies like Russia in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

There is no longer a single common impediment to blacks emerging in this society.

I love a lot of the New York bands but Patti Smith stands out. I just read 'Just Kids' and it's an inspirational well-written account of an emerging New York artist in the late seventies.

As much as we all talk about the future and how so many things are merging there is a simplicity that is crucial.

I came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn't in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about because this was the new world that was emerging.

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive Malcolm X was alive great great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory merging the practical with the academic.