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Well hello there. Sorry for the lack of non-work postings recently – I mentioned a while back that there was a reason for it, but I didn’t explain what it was. So here we go. For the last five or six months I’ve been killing people. I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost track of… [more]
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Will humans of the future have extra ears? Probably not, but cyborg technology is still fascinating. Sadly the “bionic arms race” owes much to a very real arms race. In 2005, the US military announced a multi-million dollar investment in prosthetic technology after a surge in the number of US soldiers losing limbs in Afghanistan… [more]
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It’s that man again. And by that man, I mean me. We’re rushing into a world where everything depends on an internet connection, whether it’s your email, your online apps, your Xbox Live or your TV on demand. Most of the time, that’s absolutely fine. Great, even. But it means that we’re more vulnerable to… [more]
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Two of my things have hit the internet. First up, an op/ed on Google’s ever-increasing usefulness: There’s no doubt that search engines are getting smarter, which is generally a good thing. However, they’re guilty of something called Mission Creep: that is, they’re doing more and more work. In the good old days search engines were… [more]
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Here’s a thing. If the sites you regularly visited started charging, would you stick with them? I’ve been mulling over some stuff Rupert Murdoch has been saying. Essentially he’s arguing that the free, ad-supported content model for online news and magazines isn’t sustainable, which I think is right – The Guardian website is brilliant, but… [more]
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Der der der der der! I woke up this morning! Der der der der der! Went to a well known branch of a high street electrical chain! Der der der der der! It was rubbish! Der der der der der. The slightly more coherent version is over here: It’s a depressing old world at the… [more]
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One of my world-weary .net columns has made its way online: I’m not suggesting that social networks are bad. But again and again I’m finding that I seem to be living in a different world to the tech triumphalists [with] their sunny Californian positivity. [more]
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From the You Couldn’t Make It Up department: you’d need a very special brand of lunacy to decide that the best thing to do right now would be to put a tax on internet ads and broadband connections. Guess what? The government’s considering exactly that… To appreciate the genius of the idea, you need to… [more]
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Me, on Techradar: We’re so used to the idea that everything online should be free that we don’t even think about it. Of course the iPlayer should give us HD video for free. Of course Spotify should stream music for free. Websites? Free. News? Free. Video? Free. Software? Free. There’s only one problem. Free costs… [more]
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It’s all very confusing: one of my recent .net columns is up on Techradar: Print out this cut-out-and keep guide, pin it to your monitor and you’ll always know exactly who to look down on… If you’re on Bebo, you’re 14. If you’re on MySpace, you’re not in a band and you’re not an imbecile,… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
