Alexander Williams

“ I've spent a lot of my free time making websites that I thought were great ideas. Many had gimmicky names. "BlitzList" was an easy-to-use site for hosting mailing lists. "2000 Pounds" was a site for making lists of anything, more...

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a more...

“The telephone may offer a better parallel to the internet than the telegraph, since the phone became a popular medium in a way the telegraph never matched. Invented in 1876, the telephone is just as “Victorian” as the telegraph, but more...

Describing Web 2.0 as the "latest fashion", Mr Nielsen said many sites paying attention to it were neglecting some of the principles of good design and usability established over the last decade. Good practices include making a site easy to more...

“The surprising thing, to me, was that someone can have integrity and still be completely evil. It's kind of obvious in retrospect; the super-villain in an action movie can always look the hero in the eye, and he always does, more...

Hockenberry points out that just after September 11, he had proposed a series of stories about al-Qaeda and its significance—a relatively new topic at the time for the American public. But then-new NBC head Jeff Zucker had a better idea: more...

Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest.  And don't EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit.&am more...

I am wise to your bullshit, young man.

My reaction is to say, aren't we all pharmaceutically-enhanced, biomechanically assisted, technologically mediated cyborgs anymore? Do the distinctions made by the Powers that Be between certain kinds of medical performance interventions really hold up the the scrutiny of any kind more...

Here’s another contradiction about virtual worlds. This one is about character ownership. The left-wing point of view is that you project some of yourself into the virtual world, you build up social capital, and you become part of a community. more...

On "kill or be killed" as a game structure.