My most memorable phone call came when I was thirteen years old.  I was home alone, my parents were out. At the other end of the line, I was surprised and nervous to hear the voice of my headmaster, calling me Oliver.  He had received some news from a secondary school in Berkshire to which I had recently applied.  I had won a scholarship.   I was surprised and over the moon. If I’m honest, Mr Graham sounded pretty surprised too.  Excited and still feeling nervous, I scribbled a note to mum and dad (mobile phones were still a few years away), and went to bed, only to be woken by a couple of rather excited adults a few hours later.

My most memorable email arrived on the 17th of October just last year, at twenty past eight in the evening.  I was sitting in the Village Tandoori in Clapham with Verity, and I certainly shouldn’t have been checking my Blackberry.  It was from Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo.  At one minute past nine that morning, I had written to him about Make Your Mark with a Tenner, the scheme I had started a couple of years previously. It was a long shot, but we were a hundred and fifty thouand pounds short, for a challenge we wanted to launch the following January.  Over Cobra and poppadoms, an email arrived.  A red light flashed.  He said yes, to the full amount.

Messages can be memorable because they are unexpected, or because they bear especially good (or bad) news.  They can surprise us when they come from unexpected people, or in unexpected ways.  So imagine my surprise, when just over a fortnight ago, I received a message from none other than Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister.  Stranger still, the message arrived not on embossed notepaper, nor by secure phonecall, but via Twitter, the social networking site.  Now, it is well known that Sarah, a supporter of the Million Mums campaign, is an avid Tweeter, and has risen to become one of its most followed users in the UK.  But could this really be her, by direct message, asking for my address, because she wanted to send me something? 

A quick phone call to a colleague in Whitehall confirmed that yes, this was indeed the case, and I should pass on my details worthwith.  Which is why this evening I am to attend a thoroughly modern gathering for a new and connected era;  A Downing Tweet Christmas Party.  My friend and colleague Holly Shaw, who I met through Channel 4’s Battlefront will be there and I’ve already discovered several others from around the UK who will be meeting at Number 10 to raise a glass to the Million Mums campaign.  I’m looking forward to it.  I’ve even told my mother, who herself is one in a million.  I might call my old headmaster.  He’ll probably be surprised to hear from me.

A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square, the location of this morning’s Stone Club meeting, hosted by the inimitable and brilliant Carole Stone.  The question being discussed was whether or not technology is overwhelming us.  Our speaker was, Ian McCaig,  CEO of lastminute.com and the group proceeded to have a stimulating discussion over a delicious cooked breakfast. 

Over scrambled eggs, I confessed that, having replaced my Blackberry several weeks ago, I have not reactivated the email on it.  I can still access my webmail, I just don’t have the constant dripdripdrip of incoming messages.  Without doubt, this has been a blessing because I have enjoyed more books, newspaper articles, brainstormed ideas not to mention refreshing downtime as a result than I have in several years. 

One of the guests felt that the rise of the digital age was producing young people whose social skills suffer.  I disagree.  For years the UK has been churning out millions of repressed individuals who don’t know how to connect with each other. Through web technologies, relationships can be developed and people can discover their passions in life, including other people quicker and more easily.  Better still ,this can lead to face to face meetings.

Of course, as sure as a nightingale sang, someone slagged off Twitter.  This mildly annoys me as I compare it to someone slagging off mobile phones, which would be seen as a daft and grumpy comment. I encouraged them to see that Twitter, unlike email (portrayed as the villain of this morning’s piece), allows you to see only who you want to see.  It also encourages people to be brief, which is a blessing.  Many people use it to share links to things they find interesting, so it’s like a personalised news service, brought to you by some of the smartest people not only in your world, but also in the whole world.

Back when I were a lad, we used to be taught how to write letters.  We made sure that the address and the date were in the correct place and we knew when to sign off sincerely and when faithfully.  Yes sir, them were the days.  Today, we have tools (like email) which we are untrained to use.  I see trouble ahead.  Because one day soon,  we’ll have to admit that children need to be taught how to use email in the same way that their grandparents were taught to write letters and their parents weren’t taught to write anything .  This will be greeted by howls of derision and the politician involved will, sadly, have their head blown off by someone claiming, wrongly, that they are trying to replace History with Twitter.  In a world of information overload, if you don’t know how to get the most from search engines, email and, yes, Twitter, then you will drown a sea of information.  Ultimately, they are like essential fats or sleep.  A healthy balance is what we’re all after.  Too little or too much and we sometimes end up all at sea.

What is the future of news?  I don’t know, do you?  What I do know is that for my daily junk, I don’t especially mind who it comes from and I’m not inclined to pay for it.  At the fine dining end of the spectrum,  if Daniel Finkelstein, Matthew Parris, Charles Moore and Andrew Davidson would like to form a quality journalism publishing  skunkworks, I will happily pay the four of  them ten pounds a month to read everything they have to say about anything they care to write about, if that allows them to write more often. 

Speaking of fine dining, over on Comment Central, and inspired by this excellent list from the New York Times, Hattie Garlick wants to know what your pet peeves are about restaurants.  I’ve given her eight of mine to be getting on with.  For some reason, the memory of my six months going through Disney’s training process in Florida lingers on…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I get it.  You haven’t got time to follow me on Twitter.  You’re rushing around.  You haven’t got time to watch YouTube videos.  Until later in the day, things calm down again and you can put the kettle on, sit back and take a break to let these links and short clips fire your imagination.

How do you get people to use a Bottle Bank one hundred times in an evening, as opposed to just twice?  One idea is to turn it into an arcade machine, like this one on The Fun Theory, sponsored by Volkswagen.

Another way to capture people’s imagination is by telling them a story.  The brilliant Matt Locke over at Channel 4 knows this and is organising an event next year all about story telling.  It should be great fun too!

You will hardly believe your eyes when you watch this clip of some amazing skills by some NFL players in the US.

One of the highlights of this year’s TED Global was this wonderful talk by Rory Sutherland;