Technology
Where’s all the joy gone?
Britain seems to be suffering from a dearth of lightheartedness
Dear Mary: On a troublesome festive invitation
I have been alone in the country this festive season as my adult children and most of my friends are…
Dreaming of bringing your favourite pet back to life? Soon it could be reality
The super-rich are already bringing beloved dogs and horses back to life. Soon the rest of us will be able to do it too
We let programmers run our lives. So how’s their moral code?
A few years ago, in the week before Christmas when supermarket sales are at their highest, staff at one branch…
Email needs eugenics
You won’t read much about Sir Francis Galton nowadays because, while it’s inarguable that the man was a giant in…
Powder to the people: the new deal for the cocaine market
Fierce competition is forcing drug dealers to adjust their sales methods
Bubble-wrap, berry-picking and the secret pleasures of destruction
The secrets of bubble-wrap and other delicious little sensations
Why I joined the smiley-face cult
Why my generation has fallen for the smiley-face cult
Exciting new ways of not writing a novel
Procrastination is easier in the age of Google – but less honest
I wouldn't want to be a girl in the age of Tinder
Romance is being killed off by the brutal marketplace of dating apps such as Tinder
The real reason GPs are grumpy: the robots are coming for them
There’s something wrong with the relationship between patients and their GPs. I’ve spent much of this winter in my local…
Google vs governments - let the new battle for free speech begin
Freedom of the press still matters when the presses are virtual
The technology giants are breathtakingly irresponsible about terrorism
We know they can be good citizens when they want to be. So why are the technology giants acting in ways that could endanger us all?
The agony of dying gadgets
To survive as a technophobe in the 21st century, you must depend on the kindness of strangers
Why the most important years in history were from 1347 to 1352
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
Cronenberg attempts a teleportation from cinema to fiction. Cover your eyes…
Following his beginnings as a science-fiction horror director, David Cronenberg has spent the past decades transforming himself into one of…
Every 73 seconds, police use snooping powers to access our personal records. Who'll rein them in?
Police are using an anti-terror law to run wild in the public’s mobile phone records
The age of selfie-obsession
People can’t seem to stop taking pictures of themselves – and their private parts. It’s the ultimate expression of our increasingly puerile and narcissistic society
Switching on to a new generation gap
In the world of YouTube and Netflix, generations no longer share a culture
Why don’t more non-smokers try e-cigarettes?
I was waiting on an office forecourt recently puffing on an e-cigarette when a security guard came out. ‘You can’t…
The surer we are that machines can think, the less sure we'll be about people
Having written (for a Times diary) a few sentences about consciousness in robots, I settled back to study readers’ responses…
Four gadgets to take on holiday — and two to leave behind
One inarguably good thing about electronic publishing is that it solves that old quandary about what books to pack for…
Plutarch on smartphone addiction
Adults, we are told, as much as children, become gibbering wrecks if deprived of their mobiles or iPhones for more…
Spectator letters: Press regulation, heroic Bulgarians and the case for Scotch on the rocks
Beyond the law Sir: In your leading article of 28 June you make the point that the hacking trial demonstrates…
Don’t buy The Glass Cage at the airport if you want a restful flight, warns Will Self
Will Self 28 February 2015 9:00 am
Nicholas Carr has a bee in his bonnet, and given his susceptibilities this might well be a cybernetic insect, cunningly…