Mariana Mazzucato [Alice Horsley]

IF you can keep up with her energy and accept that she’ll mention the books she has written a lot, the writer and economist Mariana Mazzucato is always good value.

And it was the case yesterday (Thursday) as she shared a million and one ideas on how life could be better for us all during an appearance at Senate House in Bloomsbury.

We could start at any point of her chat, but one of her views that always sings is the questioning of how the arrival of some of the big tech giants in London has really helped people living in the capital.

Their offices – beginning to cluster around King’s Cross – are often gazed at by passers-by, but most of the time all we can do is wonder what goes on inside, like some sort of mysterious, gated, Wonka factories. No doubt there are lots of very clever people pressing buttons.

Professor Mazzucato said there should be much more recognition of what they were gaining from being in central London, and this shouldn’t just be some wholesale, vague moaning about what tax they may or may not pay.

She said it was time to “open up the box” and mentioned Google and Facebook directly; their flash offices are near the clumsily branded “Knowledge Quarter” around the Euston Road.

“We can talk about the Knowledge Quarter as much as we want,” she said. “We have the Wellcome Trust, the Crick, the British Library, the British Museum. UCL, all this knowledge being created. And that wealth of knowledge directly helps some of these companies make mega profits. So it’s not just through tax that they should be giving back to the community but also, perhaps, through direct contribution, so they recognise that they are at the centre of an incredibly creative community. These companies are benefiting from that social, collective value.”

Harrington did warn you that you have to be on your toes when she’s speaking to keep up with the lingo but that “collective social value” should be seen as being worth something, but who cashes in?

And, as an aside, it’s always worth thinking that when your smartphone or clever telly gets a great new feature, where did the brainwave for it really come from?

Was it the top-floor bosses on with mega salaries, bonuses and Thursday afternoons off for golf, or the chipboard workers who used their imagination and tech knowhow to make it into a reality, and allow more smartphones to be bought?

It’d be interested to know what the pay ratio is between the two.

Anyhow, Professor Mazzucato said all these big companies should be doing more for the people living and working in the surrounding streets and suggested they should be encouraged to give money to a new “community wealth fund” in neighbouring Camden, initially administered by the council.

Their cash could help people with creative ideas but no funds get off the ground.

And in turn they may one day benefit from the projects that come forward.

• WE all helped pay for the BBC with our licence fee, right?

So why are the corporation’s amazing archives so closely guarded from public view. Harrington can’t be the only one who would love to spend an hour – or a year – browsing through its back catalogue of unmatched material. During her appearance alongside Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee at Senate House yesterday (Thursday), Mariana Mazzucato, above, could be heard raising a similar question, having heard from performer George The Poet about the access that he had been granted.

“He has a wonderful podcast series,” she said. “He talks about this wonderful experience of making the BBC podcast series where he got access to the BBC archive which is much bigger than what’s on the BBC iPlayer. There’s years of data and programming.

“He was given access to what should be seen as a public resource – a data commons. He used audio recordings from his great uncle in Uganda. He said that resource should be available to everyone.

“Imagine if it was available in our public libraries, or our youth centres. It would be reinvesting back into the community.”