Callum was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and has lived in France and the USA. He’s now based in London where he works as a business consultant for a company he started with some friends four years ago. His job is to help people within large organisations invent new business and technology innovations. Prior to that he worked briefly in digital publishing at Oxford University Press in NYC, and before that he studied for a masters in philosophy at Columbia University. Whilst there he was also a teaching assistant and involved in various philosophy outreach programmes into the community, activities he is still passionate about. He’s interested in politics, comparative philosophy, and the social impact of business and technology, sometimes all at the same time. Email: wattscallum2 [at] gmail.com
by Callum Watts Almost two years ago I caught COVID-19, and became quite sick for a month. Luckily I did not require hospitalisation. I was then in various states of more or less debilitating ‘unwellness’ (I use this because the word sickness does not seem to quite capture it) for about 6-8 months. I don’t…
by Callum Watts The desire to turn failure into a learning opportunity is often generous, and an important way of dealing with the trials and tribulations of life. I first became aware of it as a frequent trope in start-up culture, where, influenced by practices in software development where trying things out and failing is…
by Callum Watts At the 100th anniversary of John Rawls’ birth back in February, some of the most generous op-eds, whilst celebrating the brilliance of his thought, lamented the torpor of his impact. ‘Rawls studies’ are by no means the totality of political philosophy, but they are one of its most significant strands, and his approach…
by Callum Watts Growing up often feels like a process of finally understanding advice you completely ignored when it was first given to you. For me, this often has the form of thinking I’ve just discovered a profound insight about life, only to realise that it sounds entirely cliché once articulated. Perhaps it supports Plato’s…
by Callum Watts Christmas gets me thinking about magic. Remembering the way I enjoyed Christmas as a child brings me back to a time when I believed in the power of supernatural phenomena. The most exciting piece of magic I performed was writing a message on a piece of paper, addressing it to Santa Claus…
by Callum Watts Four years ago I looked at the US election and predicted that Donald Trump would likely win. The day after the election I described the kind of president he was likely to be. That he would ignore all norms, stack the federal judiciary and bureaucracy with lackeys who would obey him, and likely…
by Callum Watts Do identity politics and intersectionality clash with the idea of universal principles? There seems to be a rift emerging in left wing politics around precisely this point. On the one hand various organised identity groups are making it increasingly difficult to ignore the real effects of institutionalised prejudice on their lives. It…
by Callum Watts Picture this: a society that uses government controlled predictive mechanisms to determine the future of children before they get the chance to try and make something of themselves. In such a society exams and education play a secondary role, as predictive technologies are able to allocate the right people to the right…
by Callum Watts The debacle around the development of the UK coronavirus contact tracing app has got me thinking about the role of technology and startup style businesses in addressing large scale social problems. The UK government’s shambolic app release, pursued at the expense of tried and tested human contact tracing, is an example of…
by Callum Watts I worry. Asking someone out, speaking in public, stepping onto a flight, for me these mundane moments percolate with anxiety. These are personal fears, inner battles of no real relevance to the wider world and disconnected from any broader social meaning. Over the past couple of years though, I have had two…