Food for thought

Heinz Wolff is probably best known for the Great Egg Race, a TV series which inspired a generation of young engineers in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember thinking at the time how much I would have loved to be a contestant if I had had the opportunity. Wolff will be forever associated in my mind with technological invention. Last night's lecture_[1] at Ealing Town Hall, organised as part of the OU's 40th anniversary celebrations, showed an altogether different and more reflective side of him, however, that I hadn't hitherto appreciated.

Professor Wolff's lecture wasn't what I expected. It was entitled 'Frugality and Mutuality, Crunch and Care' and publicity said he would 'reflect on what the world will be like when he is 111'. In fact he did talk about exactly that, but not in terms of what inventions we could expect but about the unwillingness of youth to engage in scientific and technological careers in richer western countries and the dangers of a nation becoming over-reliant on other nations for essential products and processes. The mutuality theme was developed further with an example showing how a scheme such as LETS_[2] could be extended to provide voluntary aid for the elderly or infirm, with the volunteers earning rewards in kind when they in turn needed help in the future.

It would have been interesting given a longer question time to have debated with Professor Wolff the economic advantages of a country specialising in its most profitable products, especially in current times where national debts are mounting, however his historical perspectives of a country needing to be able to manufacture essential chemicals in war time added to a compelling argument. As for his caring theme, middle class wives can, for the most part, no longer afford to spend the copious amounts of time in voluntary activities that our grandmothers might have done, so the kind of incentives that Professor Heinz was proposing seemed a novel idea that might just work. There is the contrary argument though that time spent in voluntary work to earn credits redeemable for help at a later date will not be paying for a pension which will fund such help should those credits be insufficient. There was much food for thought in any case.

[1] Open University (2009) Heinz Wolff 40th anniversary lecture http://www.open.ac.uk/platform/campus/events/heinz-wolff-lecture
[2] LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems http://www.transaction.net/money/lets/