Brock is a teacher, tinkerer, and ex-phone phreak, based in London – though he is originally genuine Texas white trash. Now he brings home the bacon as a Research Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab, a research centre for technology-enhanced learning. When not creating weird electronic, interactive contraptions, or messing around with data visualizations, he pretends to be an artist.
News of the World was always its own story. A paper that specialized in decrying the rot in British society, it turned out to be every bit as corrupt as what it covered. Falling on its own sword, after 168 years of publishing, was hardly surprising. The question is what took it so long. (More…)
Tinkering culture has slowly entered the mainstream. Once the province of Popular Mechanics and Wired, coverage of the making and hacking trend has been appearing regularly in such unlikely periodicals as the New York Times. It’s hard getting adjusted to big media gushing about geek wads tweaking bits and bytes and building fire breathing robots in the back yard. (More…)