‘In civilizations without [browsers], dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.’ Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, 1967. Updated The word skein is a strange one, and sadly underused. It’s got a bunch of meanings; to my mind, and when I came up the idea for this ...
Let’s dispense with the obvious Proust quote right now: But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid ...
“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace ...
So a runaway tweet that summarised some feelings I’ve had for a while, concentrated perfectly by the riots: “OK, a thesis: boomers stole prospects from this generation, bankers stole cash, govt stole chance to succeed. What the fuck do you expect?” To expand: I’m at the top end of a generation who have watched as, ...
“It is obviously the period immediately preceding a clash with the police, who are guarding a nuclear power plant, a military training camp, the headquarters of a political party, or the windows of an embassy. The young people have taken advantage of this dead time to make a circle and take two steps in place, ...
That open letter thing I love to do so much: Vice-Chancellor, I write with regard to the impending rise in the rate of tuition fees that appears likely to be passed by parliament, despite the valiant efforts of young adults, academics and other engaged members of civil society. I appreciate that Bath University, as one ...
Last weeks news that Google Reader traffic was down, and pointing to Twitter and Facebook overtaking RSS readers as a consumption tool for news (or rather, discovery) rather annoyed me; correlation and causation and all that. I was going to let it go, but now Dave Winer’s done a piece on HOW RSS MUST CHANGE ...
Over the years I’ve acquired a lot of fairly useless, other than aesthetically, stuff; half a dozen vintage sewing machines, a typewriter, a green fibreglass dressmakers dummy, etc. All stuff I deeply love with so much nostalgia and narrative attached to it I initially wondered how I would give any of it up. But give ...
This cheeky little ‘kind-of-tequila’ was my first bottle of a decent, interesting spirit; in 2003/4 I was just getting my foot on the ladder in bar-tending, and working (well, ‘working’) at a new bar in Bath called Lounge. Lounge was a great place to start, as it seemed to be being run as a tax ...
And a rather excellent question raised in the debate as well: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, on the CPS‘s lack of proceeding against the officer, one aspect that causes concern is his alleged chequered history? According to press reports, he left the Met under a cloud, was re-employed as a clerk, ...