Think Of Syphilis And Electric Nasal Hair Clippers

Can you imagine how exciting it must have been to be alive at a time when frontiers were being pushed back with the energy and enthusiasm of a JCB Digger? Think of waking up each morning to discover a new country, a new continent, a new species or a new culture. Or you could think of scientific and technical boundaries, and being able to comprehend the prospects of a world set alight by the printing press, electricity, or the internal combustion engine. Would it be possible to sleep at night knowing that a new life was awaiting mankind around the next corner?

We have no need to imagine; we are there, now. The information and communications revolution that is raging around us as we speak or as we write or as we tweet, is changing our world just as much as Christopher Columbus changed the layout of the globe or Michael Faraday changed the carpet sweeper. I am not saying that the changes will always be for the better - think of syphilis and electric nasal hair clippers - but the very inevitability of change lends a charge of excitement to the daily task of existence. The information and communications revolution will decimate newspapers, consign printed books to anomalies, mean that everyone is potentially exposed to the ranting of mad men (and mad women); but it will also inject a new lease of inventiveness and passion and opportunity.

What you have just read, I suppose, is the editorial I never wrote for the magazine I never published. Well, not until the day before yesterday. Because the day before yesterday I launched a new magazine with a world-wide circulation of two (it is early days yet) called News From Somewhere. And I enjoyed the process so much that yesterday I launched a second new magazine called A Pint Of Best (which doesn't have any readers yet, but Rome wasn't built in a day).

You need to have access to a tablet or smartphone to receive these revolutionary new publications and you will need to have Flipboard installed. But Flipboard has been one of the best Apps around for ages, so you don't need the excuse of my burgeoning magazine empire to acquire it (for free). Once you have Flipboard you can find my magazines by doing a search for News From Somewhere or A Pint Of Best or by following the links above. 

It is the technological potential rather than my experimental magazines that is so fascinating. You can check out what is possible and use it to your own ends, you can hitch your own wagon to the new technological carthorse on the block. And you can discard my publishing efforts to that sad little pile along with syphilis and electric nasal hair clippers.