Kester Brewin

There are so many technology stories every week it can be hard to know what’s significant or not. But this piece on the BBC about a new sort of camera has kept me thinking all day, so I thought I’d blog something about it. Put simply, the ‘Lytro’ camera – available for pre-order, but not [...]

I’m aware of the cult of mac dangers of sychophancy today… but also wanted to mark the passing of someone who did have a big impact on who are and how we live today, both positive and negative. This speech, given to Stanford graduates in 2005, is moving and prescient, but what I want to [...]

As part of the book I’m writing at the moment I’ve been reading and thinking quite a lot about the idea of what ‘property’ is, and how this relates to the arts – and music in particular. Just the other day a new legal ruling was passed that ensured that ageing crooners like Sir Cliff [...]

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, and in the last few days how it might relate to the discussion of whether ‘newness’ is possible. This isn’t meant as an holistic critique or discussion of the events all those years ago, instead I’ve been drawn to thinking about the [...]

Thanks to the various people who popped me Google+ invite… I’ve really not known whether to jump in, and would appreciate any thoughts people have had who have made the switch or tested the water. The obvious issue is this: have Google made it worth it? If you are going to switch, do you do [...]

Interesting piece in The Independent yesterday, asking why people bother going to festivals when the sound quality is crap, there’s mud everywhere, you can’t sleep, and people push and spill beer all over you. I visited Glastonbury once, many years ago now, and left utterly mystified. Why, I wondered at the time, did so many [...]

  Interesting video from the RSA called ‘A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer’. Though the camerawork does look rather like a throwback to the 70s, it has some good angles on the Turing Test. Put simply, you have a keyboard and a display. Questions come up, and you answer them, and [...]

  Thanks to @designbygecko for putting me on to this extraordinary talk by Jim Gilliam at a web conference recently. Jim was brought up a fervent evanglical – and remains so, except that his faith is now truly in the Internet. He has his reasons for his conversion: he’s suffered multiple cancers and had to [...]

I’m currently consulting on a BBC programme to be broadcast in the autumn which is all about the mathematics of everyday life. Not allowed to say any more about it, but there is a section there about how Google can inform hospitals of impending flu epidemics days before they actually hit by tracking the search [...]

Was invited to debate with Steve Chalke last night on the topic of ‘the Politics of Pentecost’ – which was designed to think about issues of multiculturalism and inclusion over the Pentecost festival. Steve gave a very interesting opening talk about this, which we then argued over afterwards, drawing in questions from the floor too. [...]