So, I guess I’m officially a blogger. I decided to keep the original WordPress blog title because I think it reflects the spirit of the blog quite well (but I did have to modify it to make it historically correct, matching the C programme in a 1974 Bell Laboritories memo by Brian Kernighan).

So what am I going to be writing here? Well, I think the title sums it up nicely. I originally thought of Future Computer, before realising that not only did it sound cheesy and was taken, but also implied that this would be about, well, a future computer, which wasn’t what I wanted. I do plan to talk about computers and their future, but also about software, programming, the web, the environment, language, education, politics and how they will or might combine and collide to shape the future and potential developments of this industry. Perhaps counterintuitively, I will also try to write on historical oddities and relics of computing which I hope will inform the discussions about where computing is heading. Most importantly, however, I want to centre the discussion here around why these technologies will matter and what effects they might have. So I ended up with Future Compute. I think it is a catchy, memorable title, and one that I hope doesn’t exclude any areas I want to talk about – perhaps because it doesn’t really mean anything.

As for my intended audience – anyone, really. I do imagine it’ll get technical at times, and do comment if you don’t understand something and I haven’t explained it clearly enough, but I hope that most of the content will be accessible and engaging.

For those of you who are interested, this is powered by WordPress 2.6 and hosted by Dreamhost. So far everything has worked really well. I hope it’s a nice place to come and read and discuss the content, but make sure you subscribe to the Atom feed so that you don’t miss posts. If there are kinks in the blog just let me know (particularly with the feed – that doesn’t seem to be well supported by WordPress at the moment and I’m pretty sure I made some mistakes when modifying the theme).

Finally, this is also a place where I can practice writing again. It’s been a while since I’ve written properly (that is, rather than programming or emails or bullet-pointed business documents), so I encourage anyone to comment or email me with any writing corrections, tips, or guidance whether it be in content, style, or grammar.