The Wiki Man

I am, it’s true, optimistic about the role of technology in making life more pleasant and interesting, but in some areas I am sceptical, even fogeyish. Ask me to design a perfect world and it will have electronics (and medicine) from the present day but engineering and architecture from the 1930s. My answer to any

A few years ago a leisure centre advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-60s’. Nobody turned up. To broaden the appeal, they advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-50s’. The sessions sold out. Not one of those joining was under 65 years of age. How many 65-year-olds want to attend anything aimed at the over-60s? And how

With the single exception of the in- flight live map with its wonderfully eccentric ideas about the relative importance of towns and cities (what’s so special about Chartwell?), I don’t often use the in-flight entertainment systems on planes. I’m not sure I want to watch Avatar on a nine-inch screen — or on any screen,

I haven’t watched Triumph of the Will all the way through, but I am fairly confident that at no point in the film does Hess suddenly turn to the crowd and say: ‘Yes, sir, your question. Row 689, the blond gentleman in black with the skull insignia? No, not you, sir — the slightly more

I don’t know if you have ever been to Paris, but it’s basically a kind of London for girls. I generally try to avoid the place, as you can’t get a decent curry and there’s nothing in the shops unless you are an anorexic dwarf. But a couple of times a year I used to

If you have used Oxford railway station recently, you may have noticed a strange electronic sign on the up platform displaying a ‘parking code’, a seemingly random three-digit number. I wondered about this and asked around. It seems that, when parking next to the station, you can either ‘pay and display’, in which case you

It takes a more ruthless person than me to walk past any of the defunct branches of Borders without feeling some pangs of conscience. I am sure the chain made some mistakes (it had a strange habit of opening vast, hangar-like stores in out-of-town retail parks such as Lakeside, places not generally known for their

Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a new kind of subscription service. Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a

I’m not frightened of flying. Or spiders. Nor, like one friend of mine, do I have a crippling fear of tomatoes. But I do suffer from mild koumpounophobia — the fear of buttons. I should add that, in my case, it is more a mild distaste than a full-blown phobia. While I wouldn’t care to

You know how it is. You’re driving down some remote B road in rural Britain and your petrol tank is running low. At last you stumble on some tiny petrol station selling some fabulously obscure brand of petrol such as Anglo or Burmah. When you pull in, the weirdest thing happens — a live human being

At an airport recently I saw a sign for the public telephones; it was a symbol showing a round telephone dial with a receiver across the top. Nothing odd about this, you may think — that is if, like me, you are over 40. If you are under 20, on the other hand, it may

I read Dennis Sewell’s article on the damaging influence of eugenics on the welfare state with interest and mostly agree with his views. I read Dennis Sewell’s article on the damaging influence of eugenics on the welfare state with interest and mostly agree with his views. Even in my most right-wing moments, I don’t want

Most debate about modern architecture revolves around aesthetics. This misses the point. I quite like the way many modern buildings look — what I hate is the way they work. Say what you like about traditional architecture, no one has ever approached the portico of the British Museum and asked, ‘Any idea where the entrance

Judging by my fellow passengers on trains or planes, I am in a minority in being more addicted to words than music. While perfectly fond of music, on long journeys I am slightly unnerved by the many people in headphones who can sit for three hours at a stretch staring vacantly into space. I could

Every time I am forced to listen to whingefests such as You and Yours, I wonder if it’s time to invent the mirror image of a consumer affairs programme — where Britain’s largest businesses get to expose the behaviour of their worst customers. Every time I am forced to listen to whingefests such as You

If the definition of a true communist is someone who would willingly live for a month in 1970s Poland, the definition of a true capitalist should be anyone who could spend a month in Las Vegas while reading nothing but Hammacher Schlemmer mail order catalogues. Even hardened materialists can find American consumerism a little much.

Imagine for a moment that every policeman in Britain were issued with two or three tracking devices, each the size of a small packet of chewing gum. Magnetically attached to a car, it would record the target’s every movement for 48 hours using its inbuilt GPS. When retrieved and plugged into a computer, it would

There is an experiment in behavioural economics which involves showing people some item — a mug or suchlike — and asking them what they might be prepared to pay for it. Some time later, you contrive to give them an identical mug for free. You then ask how much they want to hand their mug

It isn’t every day you hear the suggestion that British imperialism has ‘done more to alleviate poverty than all the world’s aid programmes in the last century’, and to hear such praise from the lips of an American is rarer still. All the more so when the American in question is an eminent economist called