John Bull

In 1999, an incident at Pristina airport in Kosovo almost brought NATO into open conflict with Russia. This is how Michael Jackson (not that one) and James Blunt (that one) helped prevent a war.

One of the finest dramas ever made, Robin of Sherwood redefined the myth of 'Robin'. And every show and film since has followed its themes.

How Jack Tramiel's Commodore invented the mass market computer

Work with the Every team to bring AI to your organization We launched our consulting arm because we were constantly hearing from readers that while they wanted to implement AI throughout their operations, product, and services, they were struggling…

If history is written by the victors, Lore Harp McGovern should have volumes devoted to her contributions to the personal computing industry. In the mid-1970s, from her suburban California home, Harp McGovern—a housewife and mother of two—began…

In the Oscar-nominated film The Holdovers, the lead character, a history teacher, says, “Before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see,…

We’re in the midst of the biggest paradigm shift in technology since the internet and the personal computer. If you want to understand what’s going to happen with AI, you have to understand how previous technology shifts played out—because history…

One of the finest composers of the modern age, Yoko Kanno is a legend to fans of anime. To the rest of the world, she is practically unknown. In late 1998, the journalist Oliver Barder found himself sitting down to talk music with one of Britain’s…

“I’m disappointed everyone here isn’t more… you know… Spanish.” The man in the expensive suit says, with slight confusion, to the towering figure behind the downstairs bar. Jan, the Belgian manager of Bradley’s Spanish Bar gives him a look of faint…

Gareth is a digital strategist, writer, and historian. He unearths Silicon Valley’s tech history in his monthly column, The Crazy Ones. Today we have something a little different from Gareth Edwards, who typically chronicles the forgotten history of…

A short extract from the first of the Goblin Launderette series. As usual, feel free to share and ignore grammar and typos. This is early draft! Don’t forget you can find me on BlueSky and on Mastodon. As she’d expected, Em found Lex about a hundred…

The reinvention of X July 28, 2023 How to Build a GPT-4 Chat Bot Course We just re-launched our How To Build a GPT-4 Chatbot course taught by Dan Shipper! It's an online cohort-based course that will teach you how to make your own GPT-4 based…

Fatima turned the key slowly and pushed. The front door opened with barely a click. She smiled to herself. She’d got the whole routine down to an art now: Wait round the corner until seven forty-five, as that’s when the evening matches kicked off,…