Internet
The Kafkaesque nightmare of cancelling my BT broadband
Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge:…
Technology wastes as much time as it saves
I have just spent a weekend planning a family trip to Chennai and Hyderabad. Since some of the flights are…
Explained: Why you’ll never understand memes
Boy and I have been driving the Fawn mad by singing the ‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’ song. It goes (roughly…
Word of the week: dot
With the sensation produced by hearing one’s name, I jumped when I saw mine on a poster advertising an Amazon…
The vlogging fantasy that bewitches our children
My friend’s ten-year-old daughter has a new hobby. Like many of her school pals, she hopes to become a video…
It’s not all Twitter mobs – the internet can be a force for good
Few readerships of any intelligent national magazine will be more alive to the perils and downsides of 21st–century cyber-life than…
The joy of YouTube is that the content created is content-free
None of us is above YouTube, and nothing is beneath it. We have of course all long since submitted to…
Compulsory subtitles? I read ‘em and weep
Compulsory subtitles are driving me mad
The inventions (and Welsh rarebit mix) that will change your life
At last. And just what you’ve been waiting for. The official Wiki Man guide to the best gadgets and gizmos…
Letters: how the internet became the great polariser
The great divider Sir: Niall Ferguson (‘Tech vs Trump’, 14 October) draws a parallel between the Reformation — powered by the…
Tales of three cities
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
How internet paywalls are making us all dumber
Thanks to meteoric advances in computational power, it is now possible to take abundant data from a wide range of…
Donald the Elephant’s days are numbered
I keep finding myself singing ‘Nellie the elephant’ who, packing her trunk and saying goodbye to the circus, went off…
Happiness is being a Mormon
Here we go again, my 40th Christmas column in a row, and it seems only two weeks ago that I…
Are white nationalists about to take over the US? Not bloody likely
Richard Spencer made the front page of the New York Times two days in a row last week, and earned…
Trump, the pick-up artist who seduced America
Many years ago, when I was a mere slip of a features journalist, I spent a weekend learning how to…
Herzog leaves us as anxious and uncertain as we are thrilled: Lo and Behold reviewed
As a documentary-maker, Werner Herzog is a master of tone. His widely parodied voiceovers — breathy, raspy, ominous — are…
What to eat: Anyone for acid-free snake oil?
If I were to ask you to name a health problem that affects around seven million people in the UK…
What to eat: Anyone for acid-free snake oil?
The tradition of charlatans with crackpot theories is nothing new, especially in the world of health, although it wasn’t until…
What really motivates Trustpilot’s Feedback requests
In olden days, before the internet arrived, shopping was quite simple. You’d go into a shop and buy something, and…
Social media, Michael Gove and me
The publication of private emails by Colin Powell has spread panic in Washington. Now nobody feels safe. Some prominent people…
It’s fatuous to outlaw an emotion – especially hate
A man in Austria has been sentenced to three months in prison for posting a picture of his cat on…
The memory gap: how technology took over the mind
What happens when we outsource part of our brains to the internet?
The gig economy and why steady jobs are more recent than you think
In the same song where the brilliant lyricist Ian Dury gave the world the couplet, ‘I could be a writer…
The internet’s war on free speech
The web was meant to empower us all. Right now, it’s empowering censors
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