The UK’s Top 40 tech celebs – and why Stephen Fry isn’t number 1

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

When I volunteered to write a feature about the most techie celebrities from these fair British Isles, I hadn’t anticipated the amount of work involved. I figured there would be around 15 celebs, maybe 20, who had been enticed into the wonderful world of Twitter, Facebook and blogging, but the list just kept on growing. I eventually settled on 40 as my cut-off point. Now to work out how to score it.

Fortunately my years working in the PC Pro Labs came to the rescue, and before I knew it I’d worked out a scoring system based on Twitter followers, interactivity, quality and quantity of blogs, techie knowledge and sheer amount of fame. Add it all up and out would pop a lovely number, somewhere between 1 and 100.

Naturally, the phrase “out would pop” is entirely untrue. I had to spend a good two weeks following each celebrity, checking for hints of their geekiness, before I could rate them with any authority. Then there was the small matter of trawling through blogs, Facebook accounts and even long-abandoned MySpace pages.

By the end, four men were vying for top position: TV and radio presenter Richard Bacon, comedian Dave Gorman, novelist Neil Gaiman and the inimitable Stephen Fry.

(more…)

The fury of Fry

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Stephen Fry troubles me. His apoplectic Vista rant on Twitter officially made him high priest of a generation of internet users I don’t get. A generation that believes the best place for their misinformed innermost is the internet’s murky shop window.

I understand the immediacy. You think something and ten seconds later, people know it. I just don’t understand why anybody thinks that’s a good thing. Especially not for somebody like Fry, a celebrity with his fingers in every aspect of the internet pie. He writes a tech column for the Guardian, maintains his own website and comments forum, blogs regularly and posts on half-a-dozen sites. What is it that Twitter offers him? (more…)