Technology

Technology

How much self(ie) promotion is too much?

I logged into Instagram this morning and the first picture in my feed was of a political friend of mine speaking at a conference. Further down a professor friend has posted a pic of him skiing with very important people. Then there was a friend posting a picture of herself […]

Technology

Everyday tech ethics

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with two academic friends of mine about why they refused to use any messenger other than WhatsApp. “We just want it to work!” they said. “Well, Volkswagen cars work” I hit back. “That’s different,” they said. But then what about fairly […]

Technology

A little Twitter spat with Andrew Neil

Just under 48 hours ago I spotted a tweet from the BBC’s well known political journalist Andrew Neil – someone retweeted it into my timeline: Germany tonight in its biggest political crisis since late 1940s. Bigger even than UK’s current ongoing political crisis. — Andrew Neil (@afneil) November 20, 2017 […]

Technology

Farewell, my faithful travel companion

For the past 8 years I have had the most faithful and reliable travel partner one could ever hope for. But everything has to come to an end. When I arrive in Berlin this evening, the curtain will come down on those years, the end of those hours and hours […]

Technology

My new, less tolerant approach to Twitter

In mid January I was more or less offline for a fortnight as my laptop had a serious problem (more about that here). Yes, of course I have a smartphone, but I tend to access social media the old way through a web browser, and Twitter through Tweetbot on my Mac. […]

Technology

The price of cheap disk space

A couple of weeks ago my MacBook Pro would not boot. On the first day of a week-long business trip. Damn. A laptop borrowed from a friend saw me through until I got home and I could take the time to re-install everything, and restore all my files from backups. […]

Technology

25 reasons Trump ended up becoming President

I’ve read too many pieces seeking the reason why Trump managed to become US President. There is no single reason. There are many overlapping and even sometimes contradictory reasons. Here are 25 I’ve come across, vaguely organised so they build upon each other. Decline of the mainstream media (Joshua Benton / Nieman […]

Technology

Gadget review: Kingston MobileLite MLW221

tl;dr – if you’re looking for a portable, battery powered, wireless card reader for use on holiday, this is an excellent gadget. It’s especially good if you use an iOS mobile. I’ve just returned from a 3 week trip to Central Asia. Throughout this trip I knew that I and […]

Brexit, Technology

Facebook’s pro-#Brexit bias

Bernd Hüttemann earlier pointed out to me that the mood section of the Facebook app for iOS has a mood “in favour of leaving the EU” but none in favour of remain. I scarcely believed it! But now I have checked and it is true. I am using an iPhone […]