Technology

Most people were scandalised by John McDonnell’s proposal to promote a four-day working week. But before we get incensed about giving people more leisure during their working life, we need to ask another question. If it really is so vital to the economy that people spend more time at work, then why does the government spend £41 billion every year (a third of the cost of the NHS) providing tax relief on pension contributions? This merely encourages older and more experienced employees to leave the workforce several years earlier than necessary. Remember, five years needlessly spent in retirement is 20 years that could have been spent enjoying a working life

My oldest friend Sean Langan came to lunch last Sunday and, rather disappointingly, he seemed more interested in playing with our Amazon Alexa than asking me what I’d been up to. Sean is a documentary filmmaker who spends a lot of time in war zones — he’s just back from Syria —and he often reminds me of that Japanese soldier stranded in the Philippines who didn’t realise the second world war was over until 29 years later. The technological changes that occur while he’s in some god-for-saken hellhole are a constant source of wonder to him. I half-expected him to stop dead in front of our TV in amazement: ‘You

The grandest view of Gstaad and the surrounding Saanen valley bar none — and that includes the vista from my high-up-on-the-hill farm — belongs to an imposing house that was originally a sanatorium but is now a home for the blind. It’s ironic that it is located where only eagles dare, but its residents are unable to view the sights. Such are the jokes that fate plays on mankind. I had just finished a very hard training session and was looking up the mountain at the blind people’s home, which looks like a very luxurious hotel from the outside. My heart went out to the poor folks inside, blind to

It seems that everyone, young or old, has a smartphone these days. But why are the brightest in Silicon Valley taking screen time away from their children? Have they realised that we’re addicted? Also on this podcast, Tory MEPs recently voted in favour of the Viktor Orbán government in European Parliament. Are British Tories flirting with the far right? If they are, it could be because the Conservative Party has no attractive policies. Should we return to One Nation Toryism? First, it’s time for a wake-up call. Smartphones now seem so attached to us that they may as well be organically grown. Both adults and children are addicted, and it’s

Pupils are back in classrooms and parents can finally have a brief respite from worrying about their children’s excessive screen use — or, at least, worrying it is all their fault. This angst peaks each year in the summer holidays, those long, sunny weeks illuminated in large part by the blueish light from children’s smartphones, tablets and laptops. The beep and ping of devices triggers complicated emotions. In many homes, parents simultaneously castigate their offspring’s use of tech and are relieved by it: like some goblin babysitter, it squats in the corner of family life, whispering powerfully, turning children silent and glassy-eyed. The erratically applied adult phrases ‘That’s enough screen

Which is more diverse: London or Devon? That’s not a trick question. London is much more diverse than Devon. But let’s tweak the question slightly. Which is more diverse: a pub in London or a pub in Devon? Here the answer is not so easy. Though low in ethnic diversity, a pub in Devon might contain a more representative mix of ages, educational backgrounds, earnings, wealth, sexual proclivities and political opinions than a pub in central London. London, for all its vaunted diversity, is a place where you can practise extreme homophily — spending your time exclusively with people nearly identical to you. People largely socialise with contemporaries from work.

In late 1973 the graduate admissions department at UC Berkeley discovered that for the forthcoming year it had awarded places to 44 per cent of male applicants and only 35 per cent of women. Concerned about possible lawsuits or bad publicity, they approached Peter Bickel, a professor of statistics, to analyse the data in more detail. Looking for patterns of prejudice, Bickel broke down the data by university department. He was suddenly presented with a contradictory picture. Department data suggested Berkeley was mostly even-handed in admissions. Stranger still — though a minority of departments exhibited some gender bias, it was more likely to be a preference towards female candidates than

After an hour’s beach work I was just about done. I’d read some book, I’d skimmed the papers, I’d eaten some bits of cheese on some oat biscuits (the closest I’ll concede to picnics, which I hate), I’d drunk some water as per my instructions from the Fawn (‘Drink some water! You never drink enough water’), I’d dried off from the swim, I’d got a pair of very numb buttocks after sundry failed attempts to get comfy on the not very flat rock: surely I’d done enough now to earn my release? But I knew I’d never be allowed to get away with it. Not this soon. The Boy, maybe:

When I saw my first jogger in Wales in the early 1970s, I assumed he was running away from the police. Presumably joggers were familiar in California by then, but not elsewhere. I can’t imagine any of the characters in Goodfellas going jogging, any more than I can imagine Rick in Casablanca going to a spinning class. Nothing was stopping you from running around the streets back then. It was simply that there is always a high social cost to doing things most people don’t do. Our brain’s two most powerful default settings are social copying and acquired habit. Hence our preferences are not independent of our past behaviour, nor

I’m losing my patience. Not so long ago I’d happily wait ten minutes for a bus, or even whole days for the next instalment of my favourite television programme. It didn’t seem to bother me in the slightest that my holiday photos would not be seen until I’d picked them up from the chemist. I even went to the library to get information from an encyclopaedia. Life, in short, used to be a waiting game, and patience was not just a virtue but a habit. Now I wonder how I survived in a world without Google Maps, Uber or smartphones with in-built cameras. The whole direction and purpose of modern

Happy birthday to the Spectator. This week, we’re celebrating our 190th birthday. Lara Prendergast takes a walk down memory lane with three editors of the Spectator, past and present. But before that, it’s the podcast as usual. This week, we’re asking – do anti-Trump protests achieve anything other than virtue signalling? And are driverless cars on a road to nowhere? Donald Trump is soon to visit the UK, and after two false alarms, this time, it will actually happen. Next Friday, Trump will be welcomed by May in London and greeted with major protests. There is a carnival of resistance organised, with special guests such as Lily Allen and a

The Times reports this morning that Bournemouth business leaders are hugely annoyed with the BBC, whose weather app predicted thick cloud and thunderstorms for the recent bank holiday. In the event, it was sunny and warm, but the damage had already been done, and takings on the seafront were said to be down by nearly 40 percent as people decided to stay at home rather than risk a soaking. While weather forecasting is undoubtedly getting better, it seems fairly clear that ultra-local forecasts of the kind you find on weather apps can be very misleading: reducing the whole forecast to a single icon, as most apps do, removes all the

When I was ten, the two things we all expected to enjoy by 2020 were flying cars and videotelephony. What never occurred to us was that we might successfully invent one of these things and then fail to use it. Yet that has largely been the case with video conferencing. Is its day still to come? Will there be some tipping point when we start to hold virtual meetings routinely? Or will video conferencing turn out to be one of those technologies whose promise is never fulfilled: something which ‘has a great future — and always will’. I don’t know. Certainly it suffered from being oversold too soon. Memories of

New York Remember when the internet, Twitter, Facebook and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era of transparency and knowledgable bliss? This technology makes George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four redundant: no longer science fiction; more Knights of the Round Table. Big Brother is more powerful and more all-knowing than ever before, and we have that Errol Flynn lookalike Mark Zuckerberg to thank. There is no such thing as privacy any longer, unless of course one writes letters by hand and does not possess a smart telephone. (Include me out — I own a mobile but use it only when on board a sailing boat.) Yes, the world

At the risk of sounding like Jean Baudrillard, I would like to suggest that the internet revolution has not yet taken place. So far, lots of very clever people have performed amazing feats of technical ingenuity. But for the most part our collective behaviour has so far failed to change enough to truly benefit us. Rather than making us freer, more relaxed and more efficient, in general everyone seems busier, more distracted and more tense. Unfortunately, technology is a bit like Hitler: it doesn’t know when to stop. No sooner has it annexed the Sudetenland than it starts invading Czechoslovakia. The world might be happier if Silicon Valley were put