Category Archives: Technology

Notebook

Posted on February 19, 2017 by clivedav184z

We don’t know yet what the televising of the conventions will do to American politics, to elections, to the convention system itself. Some of us fear what one good demagogue with a fine voice and a rousing profile might do … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on January 10, 2017 by clivedav184z

The most striking novelty of the American landscape today, to anyone who knows it pretty well, is a little box about as big as a prairie schoolhouse. These boxes are trim and white and you see them every thirty miles, … Continue reading →

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How to fix the Internet

Posted on January 4, 2017 by clivedav184z

“For years, the benefits of anonymity on the net outweighed its drawbacks.” Not so now, says Walter Isaacson, who has a few ideas on how to deal with trolling, hacking and cyber-bullying.

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Reasons not to like Apple

Posted on April 28, 2016 by clivedav184z

An entertaining, mischief-making list in the Guardian. I particularly liked Number 24,  “Error 53”: How many corporations possess and wield the power to criminally damage their products – your products – after they’ve sold them to you? Apple’s notorious “Error … Continue reading →

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Distractions, distractions

Posted on February 15, 2016 by clivedav184z

Should tech companies be doing more to stop us from becoming addicted to our apps? In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Jacob Weisberg introduces us to an ex-Google engineer who thinks we all need help:

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Before Tim Peake

Posted on January 15, 2016 by clivedav184z

In honour of today’s space-walk, a classic front page from 1962.

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Notebook

Posted on October 27, 2015 by clivedav184z

You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence. It is a deep satisfaction very much like the one that a carpenter experiences in … Continue reading →

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Twitter fakes

Posted on March 15, 2015 by clivedav184z

There’s a 31 percent likelihood that even he is a bot, apparently.  James Gleick on the rise and rise of not-so-human online voices : Because the Twitterverse is made of text, rather than rocks and trees and bones and blood, … Continue reading →

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He saw it coming

Posted on March 14, 2015 by clivedav184z

J.G. Ballard writing about social media before it even existed. From an article in Vogue magazine, 1977: [HT: Suzanne Heath]

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Will the robots eat our jobs?

Posted on March 2, 2015 by clivedav184z

 Intelligence Squared are playing host to Walter Isaacson & Co in Westminster tonight, debating whether the age of automation is going to liberate us or wipe out whole professions. (£30 seems a lot to charge for a ticket, but maybe … Continue reading →

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