Seems we are all reminiscing. Went to the Tate Modern recently and, embarrassingly, emerged from the gift shop with the following: “Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer†(Gordon Laing) I remember lusting after practically every machine in here. Sad geek that I am- I particularly lusted after the Jupiter Ace because […]
I am astonished at the current “anti-expertise†zeitgeist that seems to have taken hold of the US and UK. Recently Neil Stephenson summed up the prevailing mood in the February issue of Reason Online: “It has been the case for quite a while that the cultural left distrusted geeks and their works; the depiction of […]
A book about memes that is in itself a meme. Devious. Now my brain hurts. “The Meme Machine†(Susan Blackmore)
One of those books that I wasn’t too impressed with when I was reading it, but now I keep thinking about it… Probably going to contribute to my ongoing slide into socialism. “Jennifer Government†(Max Barry)
Why being offered 400 channels of TV, 39 mobile phone payments plans and 100 item on the menu of your local curry house doesn’t actually make you feel any better. I’ve always suspected that the cult of “increased choice†is part of a pernicious memeplex that is making us a lot more miserable than we […]
But I keep trying… “The Bluffer’s Guide to Cricket†(Nick Yapp)
The ubiquitous blue underlined “links†that we are all familiar with are the lobotomized sprog of a once-rich typology of links that were experimented with back when “hypertext†meant more than “the web†( See history of link types ) But even Randy Trigg’s link taxonomy looks simplistic when compared to the subtleties and complexities […]
As you might imagine, a lot of discussion of politics, media, industry, etc. What I found most interesting was the discussion of the polar opposite trust models underlying academia and the internet. “Trust: ..From Socrates to Spin†(Kieron O’Hara)