- Blog
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A dot-com cyber-futurist library
Over 100 books from the dot-com era looking for an appreciative home I started buying books about the internet in the mid-1980s, long before I’d actually encountered it. I was studying photography, but I was obsessed with the net (largely because I’d read Neuromancer obvs). My undergraduate dissertation was a detailed disquisition on the impact…
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In Britain, when Parliament turns on the Crown…
…the Crown must act — How to explain the persistence and apparent indestructibility of the British monarchy. More to the point, how to explain its desperate and paranoid response to the scrutiny of Parliament. Secular moderns – rational British grown-ups, middle class people who feel a bit uncomfortable about the Monarchy but wouldn’t go so…
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Bad bad net
The Internet, which we thought was going to be liberating, turns out to be a tool of control: repressive, coercive and damaging to our most basic freedoms — So it has come to us, in a kind of dissilusioning rush, and much too late really, that the Internet (which we still deferentially capitalise, as if…
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Working in space
It’s a review of 2001: A Space Odyssey from my Hollywood history newsletter GROSS, but it’s also an essay about working in space and a comparison with Director Bong’s Mickey 17. — We’ll know that the exploitation of space is going to plan when they start sending workers up there. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos…
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Art book sale!
I’m having a bit of a clear-out. Here are some of the art books I’ve accumulated over the years. All priced to sell (I don’t think you’ll find any of them for less online) and all available for immediate purchase on eBay. Click the eBay links to see many more pages from each book. The…
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Hillman in Hendon and in Tehran
Is the Israeli attack on Iran the first on a country that manufactures electric cars by one that doesn’t? — I met this gorgeous car and its proud owner in Hendon the other day. He’d first met the Hillman Hunter in Iran when he was a kid. Not this one – it would have had…
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Nationalise what?
Public ownership as end-of-life care. — This is a quick note in response to the head-spinning fact that, apparently, both ends of the British Parliamentary political spectrum are now positively disposed to the idea of nationalising British Steel. I mean everyone’s into. Nigel Farage’s into it. Keir Starmer’s into it. But, let’s be clear, it’s…
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On the beach after the gold rush – annotated
I wrote this article for Mark Ellen at The Word fourteen years ago (I hope he won’t mind my putting it up here). The events described – my stupid progress through the stupid dotcom boom (and the stupid crash that followed it) already felt like a long time ago then… This is exactly as published…
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Paragraphs about AI
All these thoughts I keep having about AI, I’m going to put them here… — Jared Bush, writer/codirector of Zootopia 2 and Chief Creative Officer at Walt Disney Animation Studios, asked on Matt Belloni‘s The Town podcast, in January 2026, are you using AI tools? “No, we’re not using them right now…” I’m just going…