The Internet of Things morphed from a ridiculous answer in search of a problem ("why do I want my fridge connected to the internet?") to a source of Black Mirror-style modern absurdities ("someone pushed a load of internet porn to my fridge") to an existential threat ("my fridge just joined a world-killing botnet"). Read the rest

Joi Ito's Resisting Reduction manifesto rejects the idea of reducing the world to a series of computable relationships that will eventually be overtaken by our ability to manipulate them with computers ("the Singularity") and instead to view the world as full of irreducible complexities and "to design systems that participate as responsible, aware and robust elements of even more complex systems." Read the rest

I first encountered the idea of "social contracts" for software projects in Neal Stephenson's seminal essay In the Beginning Was the Command Line, which endorsed the Debian project on the strength of its social contract: "As far as I know, Debian is the only Linux distribution that has its own constitution." Read the rest

The plan is actually surprisingly detailed and well-thought out compared to the guff that usually emerges from the Brexit crowd. I'm beginning to think England will endure! Read the rest