Technology

In his new book, Who Owns The Future?, computer scientist, Jaron Lanier, argues that as technology has become more advanced, so too has our dependency on information tools. Lanier believes that if we continue on our present path, where we think of computers as passive tools, instead of machines that real people create, our myopia will result in less understanding of both computers and human beings, which could cause the demise of democracy, mass unemployment, the erosion of the middle class, and social chaos. Lanier encourages human beings to take back control of their own economic destiny by creating a society that values the work of all industries, and not just

If you had a pile of 300 books in your house waiting to be read, what would you do? Would you go out and buy any more books? I doubt it, even if you could battle your way to the front door. Yet if you’d got 300 books on your Kindle/iPad/Other E-Readers Are Available waiting to be read, would you stay in and click on any more ‘Buy It Now’ logos? More than possible. Because you probably wouldn’t even have noticed how many books were on there. Never mind 300, you can put 3000 books on an e-Reader and it’ll look and weigh just the same as if you had

Faustus to Helen of Troy from Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies: Come Helen, come give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sacked, And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest. Yea I will wound Achilles in the heel,

Could you write a novel in a month? Plenty of people around the world are trying to do just that right at the moment. November, you see, is National Novel Writing Month. Organised by a Californian outfit called the Office of Letters and Light (I know – please stick with me), the event has been running since 1999, and now answers to the moniker NaNoWriMo, which sounds like a toddler doing R2D2. The rules are simple: starting on November 1st, you have until November 30th to write a novel of at least 50,000 words. You upload it to the event’s website, which checks your word count, and assuming you’ve passed

The rainforests must be jumping for joy these days. Which is ironic, as they’ve largely got Amazon to thank for it. As the e-book continues its rise, there’ll be less and less demand from publishers for that horrible, immoral, eco-balance-wrecking stuff called ‘paper’. But before the trees get too complacent, they should remember that there’s one group of people who are still curiously insistent that our leafy friends make the ultimate sacrifice: writers. When it comes to one particular stage of the book-writing process, paper remains the only acceptable tool. It’s perfectly possible these days for a book to be conceived, written, edited, published and promoted without a single word

You are reading this article thanks to the greatest invention of the last 50 years: the internet. The web is often regarded as a panacea for absolutely everything. It is revolutionising the world’s economy. It is changing leisure and entertainment. And it is also a political tool that can liberate oppressed people. Jared Cohen, a former internet guru at the US State Department, once remarked: ‘Any combination of these [digital] tools [Facebook, Google etc.] allows for a greater chance of civil society organizations coming to fruition regardless of how challenging the environment.’ There is nothing that this incredible device can’t do. It is the greatest ever democratiser. But, a few

‘Facebook’, says the excitable author of this hero-gram, ‘may be the fastest-growing company of any type in history.’ ‘Facebook’, says the excitable author of this hero-gram, ‘may be the fastest-growing company of any type in history.’ ‘Thefacebook.com’ went live on 4 February 2004, as an on-line directory for students at Harvard, inviting them to upload a picture of themselves and some basic info, such as their ‘relationship status’, favourite books, music, movies and a quotation. Once they had set up their own profiles, they could ask others to be their ‘friend’ and direct a jokey ‘poke’ (never defined) at them. Thefacebook offered no content whatsoever of its own, being merely

‘C’ is for Caul, Chute, Crash and Call, the titles of the four sections of Tom McCarthy’s new novel; for Serge Carrefax, its protagonist; and for, among other things, coordinates, communication technology, crypts, cryptography, Ceres, carbon, cocaine and Cartesian space, motifs that trellis this book. ‘C’ is for Caul, Chute, Crash and Call, the titles of the four sections of Tom McCarthy’s new novel; for Serge Carrefax, its protagonist; and for, among other things, coordinates, communication technology, crypts, cryptography, Ceres, carbon, cocaine and Cartesian space, motifs that trellis this book. Serge is born at the end of the 19th century on a comfortable country estate to a mother who manufactures