Society
Remember when having more friends was supposed to make you a better person? More friends = more perspectives = more empathy, right? Well, a new study makes precisely the sort of claim that feels like your dad yelling at a cloud: greater social connectivity has paradoxically made societies more polarized. Not “we
Surveillance
If you strip away the science fiction trappings, the massive underground generator, the retro-futuristic computers, and the spiraling concrete staircase, the television series Silo reveals itself to be less of a mystery box and more of a mirror. While we watch the residents of the Silo scramble for truth in
Society
There is a particular species of modern myth-making that thrives in Silicon Valley, a kind of techno-spiritual folklore woven from hoodies, venture capital, and the irresistible editorial urge to attribute vast, complex achievements to a solitary man who, ideally, looks photogenic on the cover of Wired. This is the “Lone
Geopolitics
If you ever wanted proof that geopolitics is fundamentally absurd, look no further than Unicode, the global standard that decides which scribbles count as legitimate text in the digital world. You might assume this is the most boring standards committee on earth, some cardigan-wearing librarians quietly debating whether “🫠” (the melting
Surveillance
Modern Britain loves a good motoring myth. For decades we believed our cars were faithful companions: sturdy mechanical horses helping us gallop through life, guided only by petrol, luck, and a questionable relationship with the Highway Code. But that age has vanished faster than a government minister faced with accountability.
Anthropology
We used to tell stories about monsters that lived in the woods. Now we tell stories about them living in the cloud. The vocabulary has changed, no more demons or witches, just “malware” and “threat actors”, but the moral is the same: there are invisible forces out there, and they
Surveillance
The Panopticon Went Open-Plan There was a time when surveillance was something done to us. We imagined it as a one-way mirror: the grey bureaucrat in the watchtower, the citizen below. But the mirror has shattered, and its shards are everywhere, glowing softly in our pockets, perched on lampposts, hovering
Society
When Robert Hannigan, former Director of GCHQ and architect of the UK’s cyber-defence upgrade, published his book Counter-Intelligence: What the Secret World Can Teach Us About Problem Solving and Creativity, one relatively quiet line stood out. He wrote warmly of the people within the agency who were “on the
Society
A while back, being a “tech rebel” meant something. You might have been soldering cables in your parents’ basement, tunnelling into a university mainframe, or convincing Congress that the internet was one lightning storm away from collapse. You wore black not because it looked cool in a keynote, but because
Surveillance
There was a time when the Internet was supposed to save us. It was going to democratise information, topple dictators, and make cat memes a universal language of peace. A borderless agora of human connection, creativity, and collaboration. Remember that? Now, it mostly spies on us, lectures us, and occasionally
Surveillance
Closed-Circuit Television. Even the name sounds like it was designed to lull you into compliance. “Closed-circuit,” as if to reassure you it’s just a cosy little private show, like some electrical knitting club that couldn’t possibly concern you. Yet Britain runs the world’s longest-running soap opera on
Society
Virality used to mean chickenpox. Now it means your aunt’s Facebook post about Bill Gates putting 5G in your teabags. Progress, apparently. Somewhere between cat videos and Kremlin psy-ops, the word stopped being cute and started being terrifying. What we call “going viral” has become less about a quirky