The Infinite Potential of Justice
Dr. Ursula Franklin As we remembered the end of the first world war this November 11, we can also remember the catalyst that it provided for the second world war. The perceived injustice of the settlement at Versailles in 1919 smoldered and fuelled the eruption...
The Potential of Time
The point of it all struck me particularly as I reflected on the hugely successful Partner Power Summit that was broadcast at the beginning of this month. The event was produced by the Trust for Sustainable Living and I was honoured to contribute a...
Technology, Time, and The Ledger of Harms
Pacioli, da Vinci, and the Account of Time for the Age of Quantum Computing
Spending Time’s Currency Well
A few years ago, I met with a retired partner of the accounting firm where I trained for my professional designation. During our discussion over coffee, as he observed the many people around us unable to move their eyes from the screens of their mobile devices,...
A Physics of Belief
Some years ago I developed a fascination with physics, triggered as I recall in watching an episode of the television series How the Universe Works on the subject of black holes. Astronomers have discovered that at the centre of almost every galaxy, including...
Accounting and the Quantum Computer
The quantum computer revolution may soon be upon us, delivering computing speed far faster than the fastest machines today can manage. Many financial transactions are now automatically processed by computers – think, for example, of automatic subscription...
Accounting for the Long-term
Public companies and some regulated businesses are required to issue quarterly financial statements. The challenge in a technological world in which change occurs at an increasingly rapid pace is that our ability to reflect on historical trends becomes...
Accounting for Probability
We live in a universe of uncertainty, that is described by the inequality set out in physicist Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle). How do we account for probabilities when faced with...
The Cost of Inaction
Recently, I watched David Attenborough’s very thoughtful and compelling Climate Change: The Facts. It sparked an “Aha!” moment for me, as I thought of the ways that that accounting could be adapted to provide a clear measure of the path that humanity is on...
Cost Is Not Measured by Money Alone
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its...
The Transactional Force of Belief
Life is the interaction of matter and energy described by the laws of physics and chemistry.- physicist, Erwin Schrödinger Luca Pacioli might have had a philosophical and mathematical answer to the cause of the interaction that Schrödinger left in question. Pacioli...
