Terrifyingly insane. Jon manages to seak out the extremes that do hide in amongst the ordinary. Maybe most of them are just mad but in this book the very fac that these people were connected to the military and that the hippie, peaceful dreams that were the product of one mans post vietnam depression have become tools of torture and violence.

required reading, it paints a simple picture of an almost definite decline into a new dark age. Can we pull ourselves out of this? The book is not intending to be pessimistic, we can avoid it. We do have to work for it though.

This was an amusing and interesting book. I enjoyed the fact that I was reading about travel around our small island (and a few brief visits across the seas around us). It still felt like exploring new territory.

Page: 124 at the end of the brief section on the Internet.

‘Television and automibile society locked people up in their living rooms, away from the clash and vitality of public space, but the Net has reversed that long-term trend. After a half-century of technological isolation, we’re finally learning new ways to connect.’

shared on allconsuming.net at 12.27 GMT, 16/06/002005.

only connect.

I am halfway through this now and so far I find myself agreeing with the premise. The fact that it is the cognitive processes that are being worked out regardless of the content is what is interesting in this thesis.

I do still feel the urge to play games from my old Commodore 64 days, where things felt more abstract and I felt more immersive but then maybe that was because I could afford to spend hours at a game (Zoids, Shadowfire and The Sentinal) whereas today I have less time to spend playing increasingly complex games.

Also I feel that 24 as a series has become simpler and more linear as each season has progressed. The last one (season 4) has felt rather flat, especially thinking back too season 1, what is interesting is that now we have Dr. Who which is taking on board some of the more complex story stuctures (grander story arcs across a season, with hints etc in indivdual stories).

wow that was fun. A cool breeze of a space opera. Yes the singularity plays a part but it is so far future it is less about the culture/life shock the big S will be on us.

It is very funny and quite exciting and has the best self mobilising luggage this side of Discworld.

Excellent book. A piece of wonderful clear thinking about a topic that is full of knee jerk reactionism.
He admits that the topics are difficult to think clearly and rationally about, but we should or rather we have too before we make a trade off that goes too far.

An excellent introduction to networks and how important they are and how complex, we are only just begining to understand them.
It has a place alongside the likes of Chaos, Complexity (both play a part, the math / theories and the books).
Now onto the more complex maths books.

On a cyborg run at the moment. ready to read this to brush up on the elecronically surveilled body in art and culture.

A much breezier read than I imagined, yet full of interesting thoughts and ideas. It could do with wome richer metadata to support it and the current website that is supposed to do this does feel a bit stale now.