Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
How the Internet is changing lives, one person at a time – now a total of 2 million and counting …
February 4th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Although I am (somehow) 68, I continue to work part-time through a portfolio of appointments. One of the most satisfying is my my position as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Good Things Foundation (formerly the Tinder Foundation). This great organisation supports a network of some 5,000 centres UK-wide which supports digital inclusion […]
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Have we lost control of the Net?
November 16th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
It may be that we never really had control but, in the last few months, there have been some major danger signs that control is becoming less and less meaningful. That’s not a reason not to use the Net, but it is certainly a reason for Governments, companies and end users to be really careful […]
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Was the pound’s flash crash caused by an algo?
October 8th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The financial markets are a world unto themselves that ordinary people simply cannot understand – but we are all affected by movements in currencies and shares whether buying foreign currency for a holiday abroad or trying to maintain the value of our savings or pensions. So this week’s experience of the value of the pound […]
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The day they invented the Internet
August 27th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
“If you had walked into Rossotti’s beer garden on 27 August 1976, you would have seen the following: seven men and one woman at a table, hovering around a computer terminal, the woman typing. A pair of cables ran from the terminal to the parking lot, disappearing into a big grey van. Inside the van […]
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What is the name of your organisation’s Intranet?
August 3rd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Many organisations have an Intranet and give some thought as to what to call it. I do some work with South East Water and learned recently that they call their Intranet Gurgle. I though that this was a clever name. It is a play on the name of the web search engine Google; it is a […]
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Does the Internet of Things mean we’ll never be left to our own devices?
May 18th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Following very interesting discussions about the Internet of Things (IoT) at both the Essential Services Access Network (ESAN) and the Consumer Forum for Communications (CFC), both of which I chair, my colleague Claire Milne organised a small seminar at the London School of Economics (LSE) for a group of us especially concerned about the impact […]
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What I missed most while in Mexico
April 5th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just returned from a wonderful two-week holiday in Mexico. I took my iPad and managed to access the Internet in each of the hotels where we stayed – but, oh, how intermittent and how slow it was. It was like being back on dial-up and I spent long minutes watching that thin blue line […]
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Does big data have to mean Big Brother?
March 17th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Over the past 13 years, I’ve written a regular column on Internet issues and I have just contributed my 90th piece. It’s on big data and the power of the algorithm – you can read it here. If you fancy dipping into any of the previous columns (you can see how far and fast things […]
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How the Internet is changing lives one person at a time
February 1st, 2016 by Roger Darlington
For four years now, I have been a Non-Executive Director on the Board of the Tinder Foundation (previously the Online Centres Foundation), which co-ordinates the work of 3,800 online training centres in England. I think it is useful for me, from time to time, to visit an actual centre and see the work at the […]
Posted in History, Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
Is Wikipedia the best site on the web?
January 15th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This was the title of a column that I wrote eight years ago. At the time, Wikipedia had 8 million articles in more than 250 languages. The amazing site is 15 years old this week and now has over 38 million articles, over 5 million articles in English alone. I use it all the time as […]
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