Also worth saying that there has been very little useful consultation on this - very centralised policy making, happening in an investment-focussed vacuum

The thing is "digital ID" as a category is absolutely freaking enormous. It could mean *all sorts* of things, which are all quite different to one another, but it cannot usefully include every single technology imaginary that is being bandied around in think tank papers and op eds

Do you know what's wrong with modern life? There are not enough really good tap-dancing films youtu.be/XE0AvrTjDD0?... (Why is Tom Holland not in a Really Good Tap-Dancing Film, eh?)

Oof. on.ft.com/4gxTYSZ Markets hit record highs as ‘Fomo’ infects investors

Chuffed to see this get a massive boost yesterday. If you haven’t already, please read, sign and share (fellas, the read and share bit applies to you too)

So, THIS is happening "Rewild the Internet: How to Resist Big Tech" will be published by Simon & Schuster in NY and Bloomsbury in London. Every bit of power we take from Big Tech takes it away from autocrats like Trump. Showing how is what I'm doing to meet this moment. (tk u @robin.berjon.com)

Reading Anthropic's Economic Index, on take-up of Claude, and this leaps off the page: "150 countries and all US states" www.anthropic.com/research/ant... because, oh no, no this is not a colonising technology

When Peter Kyle did his PhD in community development, what entrepreneurial plan be was brewing? In the UK, entrepreneurialism is often linked to social and economic privilege - in 2020, Diversity VC found 75% of start-up founders came from socially advantaged backgrounds diversity.vc/cornerstone-...

Something I'm thinking at the moment is the fact that we're probably living through the very last hurrah for text-based social media platforms like this one. Bluesky seems to work for ppl who are very online, or who were early enough to build a following by getting on a load of starter packs...

I take my coffee without milk, definitely without froth of any sort, and whenever I buy a takeaway coffee I have to specify "can you leave a gap at the top" because I don't want boiling hot liquid flapping out the top into my hand as I'm walking down the road and why does no one ever think of that?

Before the summer I was worried the UK was basically an extended Microsoft franchise, and I guess I didn't see that the sequel to that would be "and now everything belongs to Nvidia"

I was pleased to chat with @australia.theguardian.com team who actually looked at the Age Assurance trial data, finding racial & other biases of concern before the trial are still very evident in the trial's actual data (downplayed in the official summaries): www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

Honestly, even the use of the word "portal" makes me roll my eyes to the heavens. One day someone on the left will have some digital sophistication and have the slenderest grasp of the political opportunity created by doing these things properly. But not, of course, yet.

Annnd here we are, the missing Palantir-shaped piece of the trade deal puzzle www.gov.uk/government/n...

The headlines — £31bn in investment, new jobs, faster medical treatments — sound almost too good to be true. What are we giving up in return? Me in @theguardian.com on today's US-UK Tech Deal: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I am interested in the fact that this week's UK-US trade deal is being framed as a "Tech Prosperity Deal". Prosperity is not a word you hear very often these days. What, I wonder, does it mean to economists? www.gov.uk/government/n...

🧐 bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/nvidia-s-uk-partner-is-a-16-month-old-crypto-mining-spinout

This is interesting on how difficult it is to make successful infrastructure delivery into a jazz hands story on.ft.com/4pvpx4a

This is interesting on how difficult it is to make successful infrastructure delivery into a jazz hands story on.ft.com/4pvpx4a

I really resent the way the ghoulish spectre of Danny Kruger haunts my watching of Bake Off

As if there are no possible mechanisms for working out what the impacts may be and we just need to wait and see 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is a US story but if you go into a London SpaceNK at the weekend there will be loads of kids picking up Korean skincare and lip gloss. The third space thing is so interesting - but so is the collectibles element. In the 80s it was scented pens and fancy stationery - same same but less retinol.

#design is the new #curate

Just OH a real conversation in which someone said, "It's just a question of maximising the digital transformation. How are we going to leverage all the big data and IoT?" Had they just come out of a McKinsey seminar from 2014? The mind boggles.

What are those rubber duck shops a front for, eh?

Come and work with our brilliant team! We're looking for a Business Development Manager for SocietyWorks.

Deliciously good thread

I do think that govt's willingness to so stridently go against many people's favourite artists and communicators and entertainers in favour of Sam Altman and co speaks to a particular failure of comms know how www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Evening re-up for this. Slightly overwhelmed by all the great emails received today - someone will be in touch soon!

Seems odd that seemingly all non-parliamentary politics now are taking form of "let's have a march about that". Marches are (surely?) a form of protest, not an activity of everyday political intent. Are we there now - operating at a totally heightened register, because other channels don't work?

🙋‍♀️Our Society for Hopeful Technologists newsletter #2 is out! 📩Make sure you have subscribed to it to get all the news📨 It's such a pleasure to be part of this group and strategise towards a more Hopeful tech future 🌅 We will be organising events and come together to decide how it will work ✨️

Morning! Society for Hopeful Technologists newsletter #2 is arriving in inboxes now. A little bit on Musk and X, much more about future plans + organising buttondown.com/society-of-h... and great to have a group of fellow organisers coming together 💪

Today would be a very good day for the UK govt to delete its accounts on X.

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

Elon Musk who, in 2023, was treated as a head of state by Rishi Sunak at the AI Safety Summit. This seems pertinent ahead of next week, when Trump will be accompanied by a coterie of tech billionaires.

My considered analysis of this is that Elon Musk can get in the bin www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This is very confusing. How could this kind of arrangement be even remotely thought of as sovereign AI? What kind of control does this enable UK to exert in a sovereign fashion? Something very strange (or depressing) is going on

If you are in London today be safe. Suspect that Tommy Robinson's far right rally will either end up stoking serious violent confrontations, or a handful of soggy racists trying to persuade themselves that they are "true patriots" by causing as much drunken damage as possible. Either way, not great.

Reposting Matthew who is much more sensible than I am, and as some personal accountability

I find the lack of transparency about the UK's involvement with OpenAI's Stargate project to be really very worrying and also cannot see how it provides us with "sovereignty". We appear to just be providing the energy? on.ft.com/4n3W6Vf

No one really appreciates the finer points of a bin like an Evri delivery person.

Went to a great event at the Horniman Museum this evening - which you may (or may not) know for its magnificent walrus, but which is also the site of globally groundbreaking research into coral reproduction www.horniman.ac.uk/project/proj...

Just seen an ad for a Danny Dyer programme where he "saves the British caravan park". This is, surely, the proper antidote to all that flag-based nonsense?

Working on the next update of the Society of Hopeful Technologists newsletter today, which will be wending its way to inboxes soon. There are currently 564 subscribers ❤️. You can join them here buttondown.com/society-of-h...

As someone who has been Extremely Online for more than 25 yrs, whose working life is one long hunt for weak signals/what's next, my advice for folks in the UK who don't really need to be on top of the news on an ongoing basis is to spend some regular time tuning out over the next few days

Pfffffft www.theguardian.com/politics/202... definitely the thing a *checks notes* Labour govt should be prioritising. No issues there at all.

I think it's really important to understand that the monetisation strategies here *don't even need audiences*. People are totally optional here. Content farming for yield is like a battery chicken farm that just needs to make a quota, not even bother about finding a customer.

Ahem

This is an extremely non-Bluesky comment, but (as I walk through Chelsea on this tube strike day) I'd totally missed the fact that bag designer Anya Hindmarch has taken over a whole run of shops on Pont St, with eg a "tuck shop", a cafe, a beauty store etc - an interesting luxury goods signal

Good morning from an eerily deserted Victoria station