Category Archives: Net stories

The news that OUP have done a deal with British libraries1 to make their online reference works available made me rummage around for a piece I wrote in 1996 for British Wired,  when Oliver Morton and Sean Geer were running … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I just filed this to the gdn, and I am afraid that they will think the end, which is the whole point, is too strong. So I post it here anyway, below the fold, for tidyness, and also so my … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Madeleine Bunting has been a friend of mine, if not a particularly close one, for about ten years now, ever since we were rival religious affairs correspondents. I don’t always like what she writes or agree with it. But she’s … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The other day someone sent me an email that was jeering, mean-spirited and pompous all at once. This had in fact been intended for publication, but the newspaper to which it was addressed declined, so the writer sent it on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I used to play with the idea of a detective story in which all of the victim’s character (and so destiny) emerged from a study of the traces they had left in databases — what they had read in the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Everyone knows that Google keeps a cache of the internet; if you think it through, it’s obvious that this means there are at least two internets — the one where all the sites actually are, and the copy of everything … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A review in the FT Magazine of Edward Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds, a book on online gaming, asks “when will synthetic worlds become economies worth reckoning with? They are already real, and are the fastest growing economies in the world. But … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Scott Rosenberg reports that you can’t even mention the words “socialist” or “Socialism” in comments on Salon blogs any more. For why? It’s the Scunthorpe problem: the words contain a brand name for a viagra-type medication — cialis. So the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

On Friday I found myself in a rather grand country house hotel, lunching with a widowed duchess. countess. This was the sort of place where, if you’re cold, you put on another rope of pearls, made even more enjoyable because … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Some people are upset about the craze for giving charity goats to Africa. In Africa, the real goats gnaw at everything they can reach, still further deforesting a fragile ecosystem; in this country the certificate gnaws at the recipient’s self-esteem, … Continue reading → Continue reading →