A review of Billy Hicks’s candid one-man play about the lonely experience of growing up in a new world of digital technology. … More Review of Billy Hicks, ‘Connecting’, at the Chapel Playhouse, London
A case study into the world of digital privacy in Pakistan has an unfortunate crossover with a personal incident that has made me consider the consequences of this kind of thing much more closely. … More WhatsApp, Facebook, and the Compromise of Digital Privacy
Why shouldn’t academics see the benefits in a taste of administrative life? … More The Inside View: an Academic-Turned-Administrator
I’m more than a little uncomfortable publishing this, but I hope this brief encounter with the ‘truth’ will prove a turning point. … More A Private Battle With the Truth – Mental Health
How much can you put yourself into the mind of another individual? My work on Marvell and Private Lives has been a wonderful introspective process because the way I’ve symbiotically linked our biographies together has given me license to think as deeply and darkly as I please. … More Andrew Marvell’s Quiet Confidence
A few concerned observations on what media revolutions in the 1640s and 2000s mean for ‘friendship’. … More Media Revolutions and “Friends”
A sombre weekend is sometimes really useful and sometimes really difficult. I listened to ethereal soundscapes as the sun slowly ebbed away. I made tea and watched words blend upon its surface. It’s the kind of combination that can fuel anything… … More Virtual Public, Virtual Private, and Immeasurable Distances
So console myself of a difficult anniversary, I have turned to the virtues of music, setting myself a challenge to select songs for friends that reflected how I see them. … More Music: Between Minds, Between Friends
Regular users of social media networks will no doubt have noticed – if their friends lists are anything like mine – that politics is again becoming a very public sport. Yesterday, a referendum was held on whether to adopt the ‘Alternative Vote’ system, turning social networking sites into moral and ideological crusades. … More A Vote of No: Social Media and Sacrifices
Andrew Marvell’s ‘Horatian Ode’ provides a fascinating story in the aftermath of one of the most ‘climacteric’ episodes in English history. What if it was a private poem, and not written for circulation? … More Measuring Privacy: An Horatian Ode
Writing Privacy 