I’ve just finished looping that video for what seems like forever on Youtube. Yes, that video. Like everyone, I’ve been uplifted, astonished and emotionally discombobulated by the wonderful Susan Boyle.
Seeking relief from an overdose of tear-induced dehydration, I decided to retreat into the words of one of my favourite technology writers – Robert X. Cringely. For over ten years, he wrote (among other things) an online column for PBS in the USA. More recently, he’s gone wild and set up his own independent blog-format online column here. For all this time he’s had the inside track on some of the world’s key technology scoops, an uncanny ability to identify startups before they go stratospheric, and the journalistic freedom to paint the world as he sees it. Bob Cringely has met and interviewed the founding fathers of Silicon Valley and the network-centric world we now inhabit. People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds are the everyday players on the real-world stage Bob sets up around himself.
Imagine my surprise as I scuttled from the mawkish indulgence of Youtube to catch up with the latest technology opinions in Bob’s latest column. Yes, even Bob Cringely is blogging about Susan Boyle! Do read it – it’s a great column, one I wish I could have written myself except for the fact that Bob had the idea first, and is a much better writer.
The point is – only technology and the Internet can make it possible for Bob to be even aware of a dumpy spinster from Scotland who competed in the first round of a UK TV talent show.
Culture at the speed of light. What next?