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Shoreditch’s sparkle leaves BBC presenter ‘tech-struck’
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“I haven’t felt so good having spoken to a businessman for ten minutes in about 25 years. That’s not normally how I feel! So thanks very much!” And thanks to you, BBC presenter Fi Glover, for sharing the feel-good factor with us. Glover was bringing the miracle of Shoreditch’s internet companies into the nation’s living…
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Popper, Soros, and Pseudo-Masochism
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A new report by intellectual property campaigners has again put the UK on the naughty step. This year, as last year, activists list the UK alongside Brazil and Thailand as having the most “oppressive” copyright laws in the world. The report was published by an international NGO called Consumer International, but this delegates the work…
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Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism
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The writer Toby Young tells a story about how the modern 100m race is run in primary schools. At the starting pistol, everyone runs like mad. At the 50m point, the fastest children stop and wait for the fatties to catch up. Then all the youngsters walk across the finishing line together, holding hands. I…
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Copyright on languages and APIs: why it’s a bad thing
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Computer languages and software interfaces may fall under copyright protection if Oracle succeeds in its Java lawsuit against Google. Amazingly, “copyfighters” appear to have paid little or no notice to this rare extension of copyright into new realms. But the consequences and costs for the software industry could be enormous.…
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Indoor work relief for the middle classes
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John Stuart Mill described the British Empire as “outdoor relief for the middle classes”. The phrase “indoor relief”, at the time, referred to the state-sponsored workhouse programme, which invented jobs for the poor to prevent them being idle. Mill was implying that the Empire was a gigantic job creation scheme. But in the 21st century…