Over the next few months entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial organisations, investors, innovative business models, technologies, influential commentary, events and ideas representing key moments during the past 10 years [spanning the period of Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford's existence] shall be discussed, dissected and explored…
Procrastination ensured that I am only now recording my thoughts about ”The Cult of the Amateur: how today’s internet is [...]

On Thursday morning we headed to the Computer History Museum for a personal tour given by John Mashey. As a former Chief Scientist at Silicon Graphics, John is arguably one of the most knowledgeable and interesting people to listen to while taking in the museum’s scenery ranging from old punch cards, mainframes and commodore 64’s. [...]

Blogs, Twitter feeds and even Facebook pages are increasingly featuring in the arsenal of PR strategies employed by large corporations and public institutions. This is not an idle choice: corporate blogs at both Google and Apple have at times, been the locus of intense media attention at times when new products have been announced or [...]

The outcome of political careers and even campaigns is increasingly dependent on the successful mastery of new communication tools including social media. Many MPs and members of Congress are embracing the use of social networking tools to keep in touch with their constituents, whilst Facebook, YouTube and even Twitter have potentially changed the nature of [...]

Journals and peer-reviewed publications are still the most widely used channels through which research is disseminated within the scientific community and to a broader audience. However, social media is increasingly challenging the supremacy of editors, reviewers and science communicators. Blogging about science has become a new way of engaging “the public” directly with researchers whilst [...]

Theorists such as Yochai Benkler have suggested that the accessibility and inherently social nature of Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networking and wikis mean that we might expect them to enhance our democratic freedoms through the opening of new channels for debate and collaboration. Academic research suggests that such new opportunities have not [...]

Among the traditional media, blogs and other contributions to citizen journalism have for a long time been regarded as posing a significant threat to ‘quality’ news reporting, whilst the global recession has shown that the threatened failure of high quality local and regional media outlets was not a groundless fear. Whilst some of the most [...]