The Prison of Perfection
In the earlier years of this blog, I blogged more regularly because I didn't put much pressure on myself to make each piece perfect. A lot has changed since then.
Black History Month 2048
Celebrating airbrushed versions of the heroes of the past is easy. A more urgent task is to identify and support the heroes of tomorrow.
The end of TINA
Yesterday, I experienced something entirely new. I finally learnt what it felt like to celebrate an election result. To be honest, I’d given up hope of ever having this experience. I thought my politics were simply too far to the…
On the violence of borders
I recently visited Ceuta, a piece of the north African coast that belongs to Spain and is hence part of “Europe”. It was a very strange and disturbing experience to cross that border so easily just by showing my British passport,…
The Things I Care About
What do you really care about? I asked myself that question recently, and I was surprised by the results. Firstly, it seems that I care about quite a lot of things. And secondly, although I care about these things, they’re generally not…
The Future of Books: Reactive?
How would you like to read a book that reacted to your emotions, and changed its storyline to give you exactly what you wanted? It sounds bizarre, impossible and faintly terrifying, but according to this article in NewScientist magazine, it’s…
Interactive apps for books: Q&A with author Vince Kamp
Personally, I like reading traditional, app-free books. I like to immerse myself in a story, taking a break from all the pictures and links and interactivity. But I also recognise that things are changing, and that people have different reading…
The limits of automatic recommendation systems
I was reading an article in NewScientist the other day about a system devised by academics at Royal Holloway, University of London, which “could form the basis of a recommendation system that makes suggestions based solely on an automatic assessment…
What is privilege?
When people hear about my background, they immediately think I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I went to Oxford, you see, and before that to a pretty exclusive private school (pictured), and even before that to…