I just this week finished John Yorke’s book Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. It was recommended by a good friend who’s a director in theatre and is also now writing for television. She insisted that I read it before I began any more writing. I’m really glad I did, for
Read on »Blog Posts
Fake News + Zuckerberg’s Algorithms = Blogging Again
I’m going to start blogging again more regularly. In the force of the wave of Facebook, it felt for a while like there was little point posting stuff elsewhere, but I’ve recently become frustrated with the whole ecosystem there, and not a little disgusted by the way that the site has functioned during the recent
Read on »No More ‘God In the Midst of Suffering’
Perhaps it’s why he smokes. Giles Fraser is a good man. I’ve a lot of respect for him. But in the wake of the comments that Stephen Fry made about God being an ‘evil maniac,’ he’s written a piece that I simply cannot agree with. His argument that Fry has set up the wrong kind
Read on »Some Invigorating Shit
Very smart piece by Janani Balasubramanian in The New Inquiry 0n the move in the US by the Federal Drug Administration to reclassify human excrement as an ‘Investigational New Drug.’ I actually tweeted about a similar story on the BBC website last year, which outlined the growth in the use of fecal transfers to treat
Read on »Site Under Re-Construction
Going to be doing a little (much over-due) work on this site over the next few weeks. Please use the other sidewalk, and mind the gaping holes. –//– Click here to receive updates, and hear first about new projects
Read on »On Being Let Down: iPhone 6 and the Politics of Disappointment
So here we are. It is, as Stephen Fry put it, ‘most exquisite mobile ever made.’ It is thinner, faster, bigger, more clever and lasts longer. Except, if you keep it in your pocket it bends. Except, in a year or so it’ll seem slow, heavy, stupid, with a weak heart. Better to accept it:
Read on »Dear Scotland…
I’ve kept pretty quiet with all this talk of independence, partly because I’ve somehow felt that I didn’t have a valid voice in the debate. But the last couple of days, as the arguments have become more intense and the feelings raised even higher, I’ve decided that that’s nonsense. I could say that I have
Read on »Hacking Just Got Physical: Real-World Security in a Digitally Dissolved World
I’ve not written much here for a while… hopefully people have caught up with pieces I’ve published elsewhere, and know that I’m basically head down at the moment finishing off a new book, Getting High. I’m really excited about it. You can hear me talking about it when I was over in LA in the
Read on »Books, Virtual Reality, Imagination and the Inner Eye
The bookshop Waterstones tweeted a joke yesterday in which Mark Zuckerberg went into their shop on Oxford Street: ‘What’s this?’ he said, holding up a book. ‘It’s a book,’ I replied. He looked at it for five minutes before asking what it does. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘You look at it and it kind of shows
Read on »PonoPlayer, Chilli Kebabs, and the End of HiFi in an Instagram World
Over the past week or so there’s been quite a bit of coverage given to Neil Young’s announcement at SXSW of a Kickstarter to raise money for the ‘PonoPlayer’ – a super-hi-fidelity music player that hopes to rival the iPod, and blow people away with the quality of music reproduction. Aside from my opinion that
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