Ostensibly, we were talking about "agile learning", but we soon got digressed on to the themes I'd been writing about here. So I've edited down the relevant section, which also features questions from Clodagh Miskelly, Tony Hall and Patrick Hadfield.

It's a slightly rambling conversation, but here are the key points:

• we're living through the "immiseration of the bourgeoisie";
• this is not about material hardship, but a substantial deterioration in quality of life;
• "In the same historical moment that there's been this progressive degradation of a lot of the things that made ordinary middle class life work, there has also been this new wealth of networks";
• those of us who are "riding networks" seem to be doing better (in terms of morale) than our friends within institutions, but it's still a very precarious way of life;
• before we get too carried away with our enthusiasm for networks vs institutions, health and the NHS provides a good place to slow down and think carefully;

From there, we got onto talking about the Tory/Lib Dem coalition and its approach to cutting government spending in the UK:

• it's clear that there is an ideological enthusiasm for cutting back the role of the state, but this doesn't necessarily mean there aren't also good reasons for doing so;
• what's disturbing is that, because of this "exuberance, the sort of unpleasant joy at slashing back the state", there doesn't seem to be "a sober process of determining what it is appropriate for us to concentrate our resources on, and where we can achieve a genuine handover to more self-organised ways of doing things"
• "I see them appropriating the rhetoric that has gathered around the social innovation scene in London, but without a deep understanding of why some things work and some things don't, and without a sense of what is mature and what isn't";
• cuts seem to be driven by a "voodoo belief that simply by cutting public spending, the private sector will flourish in the territory which has been cleared";
• what we need is "cuts for contraction, not cuts for growth - a recognition that we can't do as much as we used to do with government money" if we're not going to see a return to the kind of long-term growth trajectory we used to take for granted.

This is jumping ahead slightly in the argument this blog has been making, but it also loops back to where we started a couple of weeks ago.