Year: 2002

  • Hilary’s thirteen years war

    I tried to date Hilary Rosen’s battle with the demons of high-tech. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find this Usenet reference to her 1989 opposition to Digital Audio…

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  • Is this what they call creative destruction?

    (This is a longer version of an article written for The Guardian) The music and tech industries have been locked in mortal conflict for decades with no resolution in sight.…

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  • Elvis

    Nike ads and remixes notwithstanding, the passage of time has not been kind to Elvis. Outside of the faithful, he’s still mostly considered a mockery. The problem is that he…

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  • sufficiently advanced technology…

    ShazamSo it’s here. Possibly the most hyped consumer tech product in recent history (apart from Ginger) has finally arrived and it is mindblowing. Shazam has morphed from not-here-yet near myth…

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  • Bamber Gascoigne and me

    For people of my generation (I’ll be 40 next birthday) Bamber Gascoigne is a creature of myth. He was the cocksure big brain who grilled those terrifyingly egg-headed University students…

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  • Networks need diversity

    GPL zealots play with fire — Open source lobbyists are pushing laws through various legislatures to prohibit Governments from purchasing software from companies who won’t publish source code. Bill Gates,…

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  • Always on, man

    Broadband is widely misrepresented as being all about speed. In fact the speed of a broadband connection is the boring part – a simple incremental improvement to narrowband. The exciting…

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  • The Puttnam Report

    I’m getting bored downloading Communications Bill documents and searching them for references to the Internet. Lord Puttnam empanelled twelve peers and MPs for his parliamentary committee and took evidence from…

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  • For a slightly less hermetic blogosphere

    WAP blogging is a thing — I’m posting this from my mobile using clever Wapblogger. Not sure if I can stand tapping out many entries like this but it does…

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  • All the world’s a blog

    Ravings of a recent convert — When you think about it, everything’s a blog. Blog-form seems to be very basic – large parts of the web can be neatly analysed…

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