Technological progress is as messy as Darwinian evolution
There is a famous chart which shows the time it took for various technologies to be adopted by 50 million…
Who will take on the behemoths of Big Tech?
With Britain having gone through its third general election in four years, the halcyon days of Cleggmania in the 2010…
Why I welcome the collapse of Facebook’s currency
When Facebook announced details earlier this year of a global digital currency called Libra — backed by a roll call…
Why is everyone on Facebook so paranoid about their privacy?
There’s a line in Desperately Seeking Susan where Madonna (Susan) reads aloud the diary of Roberta, the bored housewife she…
Why 80 per cent of young people in this Macedonian town have turned to posting ‘fake news’
It’s such a relief to turn on the radio and hear the voice of Neil MacGregor. That reasoned authority, his…
Dear Mary: How should I deal with a friend who leaves appalling comments on Facebook?
Q. Friends and I keep in touch and share our more memorable experiences on Facebook. One friend is an elderly…
Should we fear Facebook’s cryptocurrency?
The cryptocurrency winter has turned to spring: having slumped from $20,000 in late 2017 to $3,200 a year later, bitcoin…
Meet the real Alexander Nix. An interview with the notorious former head of Cambridge Analytica
If you have heard of Alexander Nix, you probably think he’s a villain. He is the former head of Cambridge…
What’s the truth about Cambridge Analytica?
If you have heard of Alexander Nix, you probably think he’s a villain. He is the former head of Cambridge…
The 2020 primary’s pivot to video
‘Charlottesville, Virginia is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history. We know it by…
Why I could kiss Mark Zuckerberg
Since posting some of my research into the RSPCA on Facebook, I now better understand the way social networking works.…
Why 1919 wasn’t the year it’s cracked up to be
Gstaad The funny thing is that I was at school with a man called Ted Widmer, and I recently read…
Tech gurus don’t let their kids have smartphones. Here’s why
Pupils are back in classrooms and parents can finally have a brief respite from worrying about their children’s excessive screen…
Amazon and Facebook: the twin evils of our age
They used to say that the primary function of a boat was to be beautiful. I suppose that is why…
What’s bad for slick estate agents like Foxtons is good for working Londoners
Those twice-weekly sales emails from Foxtons that the recent GDPR clean-up has failed to stop have lately been spattered with…
So farewell Toys ‘R’ Us, the predator that became the prey
I remember the arrival of Toys ‘R’ Us in Britain, because as a young banker in 1984 I was tasked…
Big data is watching you – and it wants your vote
From the outside it all looked haphazard and frenzied. A campaign that was skidding from scandal to crisis on its…
I’ve faked my own iPhone death
After much thought, I am toying with the idea of faking my own death. I mean in a virtual sense,…
Despite everything, America is beautiful — especially at West Point
What is left to say after the church shooting in the Home of the Depraved? Those killed in Texas included…
The new tycoons
The giants of the internet have long said that they are not publishers but mere platforms — or couriers —…
High life
I think this week marks my 40th anniversary as a Spectator columnist, but I’m not 100 per cent certain. All…
A tale of two Valleys
Silicon Valley looks like a cross between Milton Keynes and the set of the Stepford Wives. Row after row of…
Deus ex machina
Mark Zuckerberg says that Facebook could be to its users what churches are to congregations: it could help them feel…
The vaping craze isn’t about nicotine. It’s about gadgets
Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and…
The internet’s war on free speech
The dream of internet freedom has died. What a dream it was. Twenty years ago, nerdy libertarians hailed the web…
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