Technology
Low life
For early humans there was no distinction between spirit and matter. There was no idea of self; no barrier between…
Fresh hell
Prepare for the ‘metaverse’
The changing face of war
The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies…
What will you buy that others won’t?
In 1966, the legendary adman David Ogilvy set out to buy a home in France. He boarded a transatlantic liner…
Wake-up call
Why is it so hard to live without a mobile phone?
An idea whose time has come – at last
Thornton Wilder remarked that there are individuals who fall in love with an idea long before its appointed rendezvous with…
The problem with ‘David’s law’
Two members of parliament have been killed in the past five and a half years. This, one long-serving MP laments,…
Banning anonymity creates more problems than it solves
There are growing calls to end internet anonymity in the wake of Sir David Amess’s death. The Tory MP Mark…
What Prince William gets wrong about space travel
Time was when ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’ was not just a line from Star Trek.…
E-everything is heading your way
Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller…
The forgotten Einstein
Why isn’t John von Neumann better known?
The stalemate election
Germany needs to progress beyond Merkel – but will it?
The whole picture
There’s an intriguing conversation on YouTube between Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, and the artist Damien…
Memory sticks
Technology is robbing us of the power to forget
A cocktail of errors
I often argue that, in theory at least, well-made cocktails are indisputably better than wines costing 20 times more. My…
The new pirates
Ransomware attacks are a threat to us all
Phishing trip
I was held to ransom by hackers
Is burglary on the rise again?
Long before the official numbers began to rise, back in 2014, it was clear that knife crime was on the…
World gone lazy
‘Where’s the car?’ said my wife Alice, interrupting my Zoom meeting on Saturday morning. ‘It’s where you left it,’ I…
Better to back clean aviation than to punish frequent flyers
Have you been scanning airline websites for exotic destinations to which your double-jabbed status might allow you to slip away…
Zoom and bust
The tech industry is braced for the post-pandemic blues
Taking charge
As a wise colleague once said: ‘Yesterday is a great time to buy a computer, because you have already enjoyed…
The state we’re in
As Britain starts its long Covid recovery, are deeper problems lurking beneath the surface? Matthew d’Ancona certainly thinks so, and…
The next big thing
Welcome to Utopia — not an idyllic arcadia but a secretive tech incubator in a Manhattan office block. Here a…
Routine procedures
Among the horrors, some aspects of lockdown were bizarrely less gruelling than expected; indeed for some people, the experience was…
