Scene: An airport. A few years from now. "I'm sorry sir, we can't let you on the flight until you visit the rest-room." I'll admit that it caught me off-guard. Surely the woman at the airline gate was joking? "Sir, two of the plane's toilets are out-of-order. At this time we're requesting all passengers void themselves before entry." "Look, I'm a grown man. I've been responsible for my own piss for several years now. Pretty sure I'll be fine." She gave me a sceptical look and prodded her…
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Imagine, just for a moment, you could tell someone's most intimate secrets just by looking at them. Many year ago, when I was very young and you were even younger, I saw an advert in the back pages of some cheap comic. The implication was clear - SEE GIRLS NAKED! The reality was somewhat more prosaic. But technology marches on. Today, you can buy a smartphone with a thermographic camera. Point it at whoever you like and uncover them. A glance is all it takes. He's lying. She's…
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As I scuttled through Piccadilly Tube Station last week, I noticed a relic of the past. Where once a dozen-or-so booths greedily gobbled up the loose change of passers-by - there now is a scar. What's the next thing which will be torn out of the landscape? Petrol stations are likely to remain - even if just as places to rapidly charge electric vehicles. Perhaps bus stops vanish as we use crowd-sharing mass-transit efficiently moves us around? Litter-hunting robots which crawl the streets …
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The most distressing movie moment I experienced when I was a child, was watching R2-D2 being shot by a TIE fighter towards the end of Star Wars. (Spoiler!) The sheer callousness of a "baddie" deliberately inflicting pain on a cute a loveable character is, I suppose, understandably upsetting - especially to a small child. I also got upset at C-3PO being dismantled in The Empire Strikes Back, and at Johnny 5 being beaten up in Short Circuit 2. But both those characters have anthropomorphic…
Continue reading →The UK telecoms regulator Ofcom is attempting to simplify the way consumers are charged for telephone calls. (Disclaimer: I work for a company which is regulated by Ofcom. This is my personal blog.) To deal with the multitude of different types of phone numbers - each with their own unique cost - and the rise of the mobile phone, Ofcom want this to be the norm by 2015: Under new rules confirmed today, telephone users calling service numbers will in future see the cost broken down into an…
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In July this year, I spoke at the 25th Privacy Laws Annual Conference. One of the things I most love doing is causing an audience to gasp with shock. I was asked about how businesses should best go about protecting the privacy of the customers - somewhat provocatively I replied "Why should they? Customers don't care." I then showed them the Twitter feed of @NeedADebitCard - all it does is retweet people who have taken a photo of their debit or credit card and then posted it onto Twitter. …
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I was honoured when David Wood asked me to present at his first "brown bag" lunch lecture at Accenture. Normally I would run through a presentation of this length at several different venues and thoroughly hone it before presenting at a high profile event. As you'll see from the slides and video, it's still a bit rough round the edges. I based this talk on Jonathan Zittrain's excellent Future of the Internet - And How To Stop It. You can keep up to date with all of Zittrain's work on…
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