July 23, 2014
Three major UK office developments get green light following months of talk
Three of the most talked about UK office developments have been given the go ahead within the space of a few days. The Government has finally announced that the new construction headquarters for HS2 will be in Birmingham, rather than London. Meanwhile, following all of the wrangling about its proposed takeover by Pfizer, Astra Zeneca has announced that the controversial move of its research facility from Cheshire to a new base in Cambridge will involve the creation of a new £330 million complex designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. Finally, planning consent has been granted for the 4.9 million sq ft Wood Wharf development in docklands including nearly 2 million sq ft of office space which the developer claims will be aimed at the thriving London technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) sector.
July 14, 2014
How Arthur C Clarke and other writers predicted tablet computing and the iPad
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology
Arthur C Clarke was one of those scientists and science fiction writers who made a pretty decent fist of getting his technological predictions right. Not only did he foretell general trends such as flexible working and the future nature of work in cities, he also got a number of details right, too. His screenplay for the Stanley Kubrick directed 2001: A Space Odyssey featured astronauts using something uncannily like an iPad. Indeed, so uncanny was the resemblance that when Apple came to have their long-running global patent tussle with Samsung following the 2010 launch of the iPad, the film was cited by Samsung as evidence that Apple hadn’t come up with the idea of a rectangular screened device at all. The judge ruling in the US case ultimately dismissed this specific argument but did conclude that other real world examples of devices would be admissible.
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