The full film of Adam Curtis’s experimental film It Felt Like a Kiss
Is now available here.
Author Archives: JamesH
The author as performer: FT weekend arts cover story today
Late last year, for one night only, fans of the musical The Lion King were turned away from the Lyceum theatre in London’s West End. If they had been able to peer inside at the stage they would have witnessed … Continue reading
Take two popular new stories, one a recent Hollywood thriller and the other the work of an underground London theatre company, and discuss.
Has anyone seen Duplicity? The film stars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts as two former spies who can’t help bumping into one other. The film jumps back and forth so much, the time frame is so scrambled, that it’s impossible … Continue reading
Great Business Week feature on the US “innovation shortfall”
Read it here. After all the talk about the “network effect” and its “accelerating pace of change”, it turns out that US growth in the last decade has been based on cutting costs and cheap credit. The lesson is that … Continue reading
Are our Googling days numbered? Preview of my T2 Cover Story in The Times (London) tomorrow.
In the space of a single decade, internet search has changed the way we look out onto the world beyond recognition. Google has become our binoculars and our window out on the net. With that blinking cursor on our internet … Continue reading
EST for ADD; The shocking Chinese cure for ‘internet addiction’
Great news story, if it’s true, from today’s Sunday Times, which claims that Chinese parents are subjecting their children to electronic shock therapy to wean them off their ‘addiction’ to computer games. Fantastic irony in the idea of using electric … Continue reading
Very kind review in The Globe and Mail by Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics
Is Twitter making us twits? There’s no doubt that our time online changes us, but is it ultimately harmful? DON TAPSCOTT 30 May 2009 The Globe and Mail LOST IN CYBURBIA How Life on the Net Creates a Life of … Continue reading
Will be giving a lecture at the Edinburgh Film Festival, Fri 19th June at 230pm, on “Storytelling in the cybernetic age”. With film clips, to keep everyone awake!
Read the Introduction to Cyburbia
here
I’m appearing tomorrow Tue 12 May, 730pm at the Bristol Festival of Ideas, if anyone’s around.
More info here.
Jonah Lehrer, marshmallows and the problem of self-control
The science writer Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article on self-control in next week’s issue of the New Yorker (“The Secret of Self-control”, New Yorker, May 18 2009). Lehrer rehearses the same scientific study I mentioned in Cyburbia, the famous … Continue reading
Just back from seeing Tunnel 228, the collaboration between Punchdrunk and Kevin Spacey
It’s really interesting. Go and see it – to book, go here. As I point out in the book, Punchdrunk beat the assembled hucksters of Web 2.0 hands down. The real possibilities opened up by our relentless button-pressing lie not … Continue reading
Lovely review from Art Review’s May edition, by JJ Charlesworth
Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are By James Harkin Little, Brown / Knopf Canada, £17.99 / $24.32 (hardcover) Right now, you’re probably too busy bidding on eBay, cruising Second Life, emailing on your … Continue reading
Great review of Lost in Cyburbia in Canada’s National Post on Saturday
Even if they didn’t go for the title. Read it here
How The Geeks inherited the Earth. An essay which will appear in this week’s New Statesman.
Thursday 26 March 2009, day 66 of Barack Obama’s presidency, may be remembered as the day that his clean-living administration went to pot. The occasion was the launch of Obama’s Online Town Hall, designed to build on the momentum … Continue reading
Trapped in Cyburbia: A lovely review from Spiked-Online
By Jennie Bristow. Read it here
Lost In The Loop: Review from DNA Sunday, India, 5 April
Lost in the loop Malvika Tegta 826 words 5 April 2009 DNA Sunday English Copyright 2009. Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. Inhabitants of cyber space essentially conform to peer opinion and willingly become nodes of loose information, argues a new book … Continue reading
Adam Curtis on the rise of Oh Dearism; from Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe
Watch it here
Exciting feedback from Russia: Greatest interest in creative-social project aroused in great country Russia
Received this morning. “Subject: Greatest interest in creative-social project aroused in great country Russia Dear Dr (I do presume) Herkin, I am live in Rassia and am v interesting to buy your this book. I do spend time on the … Continue reading
Review: The Independent, 27 March. Invasion of the Cybermen
By the critic and author of The Play Ethic Pat Kane. Read it here.
Twister: The New Yorker on non-linearity, or cyber-realism
A great article in last week’s New Yorker, analysing the film-making technique of Tony Gilroy, finds most of the ingredients of cyber-realism – the puzzle, the loop, multiplicity of perspective and the tie – within Duplicity, his latest film. According … Continue reading
Punchdrunk and Adam Curtis: It Felt Like a Kiss
Manchester International Festival have announced a show entitled It Felt Like A Kiss, a collaboration between the documentary-maker Adam Curtis, the theatre company Punchdrunk whose work I write about in Cyburbia, and Damon Albarn. Read more here. The show, according … Continue reading
Losing The Plot: The new cyber-realist storytelling. Essay in The Observer’s quarterly film magazine today.
Read it here.
Little Brother: Me on Google, on Newsnight last night
Watch it here.