Off The Shelf

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” — Robert A. Heinlein Privacy intrusion, the surveillance state. Call it The Creepy Internet . A few months ago, I attended a day-long seminar at a well-known global technology company. They are partnering tirelessly with companies applying machine learning, big data and artificial intelligence to know you better than you know yourself. We’ve all experienced ‘stalker’ ads that follow you around online - even after you've bought the product - but this goes way beyond that level of creepiness. It’s not simply that disconcerting feeling of seeing a product before you consciously knew you wanted it. We piece together ‘reality’ from a remarkably small amount of information, and increasingly that reality is manipulated through your connection to the digital world. This can be positive: it can help us make healthy choices, avoid traffic jams, keep in to...

I recently wrote a piece for The Bookseller about bookshops learning to overcome their technophobia. But really 'technophobia' is a proxy - and, on reflection, perhaps a disrespectful one - for change . I say disrespectful, because many booksellers are extremely tech-savvy and many have been trading heroically through the lockdown. I visited my local bookshop Mostly Books yesterday (to be clear, remaining socially distanced, and by prior appointment) and witnessed an impressive operation of online and phone ordering, home deliveries, and perspex screens in anticipation for a phased re-opening beginning in June. But the grim reality is that - as shops re-open - it is going to be a world of perspex screens, masks, gloves and remote contact. In other words, anything but the personalised, one-to-one independent bookselling experience that most entrepreneurs got into bookselling for. And that's before we even consider bookshops that major as destinations, with cafes and ...

“ Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it .” — Hannah Arendt When recommending fiction as a bookseller, I sometimes heard the phrase “I don’t read fiction”. On enquiring further, there was a suspicion that fiction was somehow frivolous, made up, a poor alternative to reading non-fiction, which told you how the world really worked. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the power of narrative to shape the world. Humans are story machines. Homo Sapiens conquered the world because we evolved to think in the abstract. Up against a nasty, brutish environment we could rehearse alternatives: war-gaming alternative scenarios to avoid worst-cases. But we were also able to share wisdom, taking our experiences and hard-won knowledge, encoding them into the prehistoric version of a meme: stories that were easy to remember, could be acted out or spread using art and language. Stories encoded everything from plants that could kill us (or keep us alive), to the histor...

One superpower of our species is the ability to quickly adapt to technological breakthroughs. We invent things, make them widely available, build platforms on which we can see further, do more. The speed at which we incorporate breakthroughs into our lives — from semiconductors to GPS — is breathtaking and inspiring. We are very good at standing on the shoulders of giants. But there is a dark side to platforms. We can be seduced — and become dangerously dependent — on technology. Greater connectivity leads to new forms of warfare. Energy and transport infrastructure makes us dependent on planet-wrecking fuels. Bacteria quickly evolve to outflank the antibiotics that save lives. These platforms allow us — metaphorically — to live at a higher level. Consequentially we have much, much further to fall if they fail. The technosphere (coined by Peter Haff ) refers to the ‘stuff’ humans have created to keep us alive on the planet, from factories and farms to planes and plastic bags. But it al...

" Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better. " - Ray Bradbury BBC News website front page graphic: April 6th, 2020 Szeming Sze was born in China in 1908, and became a doctor. His father was Chinese Minister to Great Britain. So whilst resident in the country, Dad took the opportunity to install the young Szeming at Winchester College, and from there he went on to study medicine at Cambridge. " To understand the man " said Napoleon " you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty. ". And for twenty year-old Dr Sze that meant treating patients at St Thomas's Hospital in London. St Thomas' is a hospital with an intriguing history. Built originally in Southwark, it was founded to provide treatment for the poor, sick, and homeless long before the NHS was founded. When it reloca...