http://www.davidworlock.com Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:19:07 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Do you get sudden flashes of recall for no obvious reason?  Last week  I recalled a moment forgotten for a decade, and found it raised a question that I really wanted to ask. I remembered a panel at an MIT seminar in the mid-nineties. I seem to recall that Stewart Brand was one ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/07/go-tell-it-to-the-robots/ Do you have a moment? Let me take you to a site I know, where you can see a government caught in a quandary. Its at https://www.schoolsrecruitment. dcsf.gov.uk/ and it represents the entanglement of media, a networked society, and the controlling urges of government in a fairly graphic way. The dilemma ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/07/viewing-the-ruins-of-policy/ So there was a word for it after all. Some kindly soul at a conference last week, seeing that I was unable to describe the strange digital burbling that took place when you dialled up a database in 1979 and inserted the telephone handset into the accoustic coupler, kindly shouted ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/07/gribbling-in-the-dark/ Wounded.Or at least hors de combat for a week . A swollen and poisoned leg has reduced the international traveller of recent weeks to an impotent and gouty Englishman on his back like some stranded turtle , leg in the air and , by default , an enforced spectator of ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/06/meditation-on-a-dry-gulch/ It was an argumentative week in New York last week . Not that I found myself arguing with the publishing and information community , of course . As ever they were gentle and sapient beings who could see all three sides of every question . Yet more than on a ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/06/getting-into-the-info-drug-argument/ http://www.complinet.com/connected/news-and-events/press-releases/Thomson-Reuters-to-Acquire-Complinet.html After the previous week's heady adventures it felt natural to seek anonymity . And where better to do that than in the bowels of the European Commission as an evaluation rapporteur , quietly sifting the hopeful and hopeless proposers of technology projects in a selection process so scientifically refined that the ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/06/coming-of-age-from-putney-to-eagan/ This was a bit of a shock . For one thing , all messages that include the words " All hail , Dave " are usually aimed at the incoming Prime Minister , Mr D Cameron , rather than yours truly . For another , I do not really know ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/05/all-hail-to-an-epublishing-rock-god/ The question , when it came , was loaded in a way that I had not guessed at in advance , though I knew that its appearance was inevitable . I was speaking at an excellent MarkLogic breakfast briefing ( the slides are on this site ) last week and ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/05/a-last-squeeze-of-the-lemon/ Three weeks without email is a wonderful restorative . And if you catch at something really important to replace the daily messaging fix then you are weaned of the habit within a few hours . For me , travel is just such a replacement habit . As we wandered in ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/05/from-the-walls-of-ancient-merv/ Travel . Movement frees us , engenders adrenalin , encourages speculation , broadens mind and backside in equal measure and only impoverishes the wallet . These departing thoughts as I leave the Hut for a short vacation in Uzbekistan , Turkmenistan and Iran , also drive me back to geolocational ... http://www.davidworlock.com/2010/04/24-hours-from-tulsa/