In the early days of the pandemic in March of 2020, footage captured on smartphones from Italy started doing the rounds online. As is the way of things on the social networked world of the web, whatever strikes an emotional chord is propelled forward in a million different directions at once as unseen hordes of […]
Group identity is complex. It goes way back, all the way to the origins of humanity, within genetic code we’ve carried forward through millennia. These days, we might be the chairperson of the community committee, the goalkeeper for the football team, the operations manager for the startup. All of these things become parts of our […]
As these words appear on the screen before me, towards the end of April 2021, Covid-19 cases and deaths are soaring in India. The country has registered record daily case numbers for several days in a row now, and the number of deaths attributed to the disease is now reaching a few thousand each day […]
Beneath all the numbers and data points of the pandemic, you’ll find some of the human stories that need to be told. Whether it’s the doctors and nurses on the front-line, the nuance and complexity of vaccine trials and roll-outs, or the tragic human Petri dish that has been witnessed in the Amazonian city of […]
Everywhere since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, we have seen an endless array of numbers and been told an endless series of stories. Numbers and stories are among the greatest inventions of humankind. Stories have been told around campfires, from pulpits, from stages and via technology. Stories, told in spoken word and […]
Shay Healy died last week. For those of you outside Ireland, the name will probably mean little. But for many people within Ireland, especially for those above, say, 45 years of age, Shay Healy will conjure up a variety of thoughts and feelings and memories. Healy was a master of many trades. Journalist, broadcaster, songwriter, […]
Around the world, there are signs that things are beginning to open up. After a year of Covid-19, the virus and attendant disease has not gone away, there have been significant vaccine challenges — from manufacturing and distribution to potentially fatal side-effects for a small number of people — and the fear over vaccine-resistant mutant […]
In my day job, helping businesses to navigate the often murky waters and choppy seas of communicating and marketing on the Internet, I pay close attention to a gentleman called Avinash Kaushik. He’s worked for Google for a long time and he writes about what he calls the “intersect between Digital Marketing and Data Analytics”. […]
A thesis has been developing in my mind this past year or more, first taking shape as time slowed down so much for so many of us in the early stages of the pandemic. Later, as the external world inevitably started to speed up again, this worldview which had taken hold in the long warm […]
One of my favourite writers, Bill Bryson, has a thought-provoking passage near the beginning of his book about Australia, Down Under, published in 2000. Through the technological miracles of television and commercial travel, Australia seems so accessible now, even homely. We might easily remember the theme tunes of Home and Away or Neighbours, or know […]