Facebook’s new Ticker and Timeline features have caused more than the usual kerfuffle that surrounds a Facebook update. That’s because it so obviously threatens the privacy that users still want to control. Ticker means that Facebook will be able to integrate and record just short of absolutely everything everyone does online, while Timeline means it will be saved until your bones turn to dust. And it turns out not everyone wants that. Read more →

Statistics have become the ubiquitous life-blood for much football journalism in recent years, happily coagulating in the void between games.  Thanks primarily to Opta, once fans and pundits have had their fill of a match, once each have finished meticulously analysing every significant incident in detail, there is now the option to gawp in wonderment at the relentless stat-barrage that comes with the aftermath of every high profile game. Essentially, once you’ve seen the game on the pitch, you can replay it all in your mind with the help of Excel. Read more →

In Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End Of History And The Last Man, the philosopher and political economist postulated that history may well be coming to an end. His words weren’t those of a raving soothsayer – he did not claim that everything everywhere would end in an apocalyptic hellfire; quite the opposite. He argued that history, as a social and political evolution, will have reached its final form, unable to move beyond or advance towards anything ‘better’ than Western liberal democracy. Read more →