The marvelous English actor Stephen Fry (Oscar Wilde, Jeeves and Wooster, etc. etc. and the impending ITV series about a solicitor, Kingdom [1]) has a new column for the Guardian Weekend all about his obsession with gadgets and things techie. The first column, “Welcome to dork talk [2]“, sets the table for what is bound to be a run of highly entertaining — and knowledgeable — columns on thing that might well interest more than one reader of Slaw. Fry says:
…[W]hat kind of devices might I be discussing over the coming weeks? Including, but not confined to: mobile phones, smartphones, music players, media players, cameras, electronic books, satnavs, computers, peripherals, TVs, games machines and any digital device or grown-up toy that may take my fancy. And not necessarily all that grown-up, either.
I won’t be writing about hand-helds and hardware only, however. I have to confess that while gaming as such is not my first interest, and I don’t spend much time in World of Warcraft, Halo or Manhunt, I do have a Second Life existence (you’ll never find me, so don’t look. Lord, there’s a thought: “celebrity avatars exposed” – fair chills the blood). I have a secret presence on Facebook and a public one, too, which I don’t have the time to pay much attention to. So, yes, I’ll undoubtedly have a look at Web 2.0, social networking and other contentious and contemporary digital issues.
It appears, alas, that there’s no way to subscribe to this column via RSS. If anyone finds a way, please do let us know.
As a bonus, I’ve discovered from the column that Fry has a blog [3] seemingly about his relationship with technology and which, because it’s powered by WordPress, does have an RSS feed [4].
Oh, and I would have said “nerd” rather than “dork.” What do you think?