A commonly-held misbelief is that science fiction is about predicting the future. It really isn't. However, this doesn't mean that SF views of the future are not useful in hindsight. They are very good for highlighting the ways in which the imagination misfires. One of my favourite examples was  a James Blish novel, where the author pointed out that electronics would be useless in Jupiter's atmosphere, because the immense pressure would collapse the valves (vacuum tubes) that were required for pre-transistor electronics. But the particular case I would like to use here is more about SF's approach to information. Science fiction from the 1960s and early 70s had a huge miss in envisaging something that is commonplace now - ready access to high bandwidth information flows. A classic example of this was on the original series of Star Trek, where Mr Spock is regularly seen inserting little plastic rectangular objects into a console to access different data stores. Of course ...

The hidden connector on the router Some revolutions happen so quietly that many people don't notice - and one such revolution is happening to the telephone system right now.  Our traditional phone system is, frankly, an anachronism. We have a connection to the house designed to bring us voice calls. The internet - frankly our main use of these copper wires now - is clumsily piggybacked onto this antiquated system via the dreaded ADSL filter. But, without any fuss - without, I suspect, most people yet knowing about it - this approach is being phased out. As of today, the phone sockets in our house no longer work. Instead, the phone is plugged into the back of the broadband router, into a connector hidden behind a sticker. Our 'phone number' is now a dummy thing, with calls arriving across the fibre optic link as Voice over IP and being translated to a fake old phone signal at the box. Gone but not missed It was only a matter of time. The old system was well past its sell-by ...

When I was at university and in my 20s I took listening to music seriously. I had chunky speakers and a big, scary-looking amplifier to wrangle the output of my record deck. As much as possible I listened to music seated appropriately to get a good stereo image. How things have changed. More often than not (as I write this, for example) I listen to music on reasonable, but not exactly mega speakers attached to my computer. On the move I use AirPods - wireless earbuds - and, again, the sound is fine. And I've now got rid of the final iteration of my home stereo to replace it with what's shown above - a pair of HomePod Minis, each about the same size as my fist. And that's it. No other equipment, no vinyl or CDs cluttering up the place. Is the sound as good as those chunky speakers and hefty amplifier produced? Well, no. But do I care? Not at all. It's good enough. And in exchange for some loss of audio quality I've got access to the vast majority of recordings that e...

Philip Ball is one of our most esteemed science science writers, so it's easy to think of his new book The Modern Myths as a hobby project. However, Ball brings to this exploration of the idea that stories about the likes of Robinson Crusoe, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and Batman are our modern day myths the same erudition, attention to detail and careful research as he does to writing about the physical world. Ball's thesis is that there is something about certain stories that enables them to escape the bounds of their origin to mutate and become something quite different - and further reaching - than the original. Often, many of us haven't ever read the originals. And if we have, they can be quite disappointing. As Ball points out, to become a myth, it helps a lot of the original work is ambiguous in interpretation and loosely written. As a result, we are unlikely ever to find 'great literature' taking on mythical form - it is far more likely to come from genre fict...

 Every now and then I get an email from a reader pointing out an error in one of my books. I'm grateful for  the opportunity to put things right, even though it's hard not to feel like a parent, having a fault in one of your children pointed out.  The other day, though, I got a correction that felt quite different. The problem was with this illustration from Quantum Computing : A reader wrote to me to point out (correctly) that the number in the picture should in fact be 0.70710 6 7811... - obvious, I'm sure you're thinking, but I missed it.  I couldn't help ask if the reader could do amazing mental arithmetic in his head. It turns out not to be the case. He told me that his job was writing graphics software, and this meant that a few key values come up all the time, one of which happens to be this number. The number will be fixed in future editions. My thanks to Icon's editorial director, Duncan Heath, for pointing me to this Fry and Laurie sketch, which seemed...