Today’s (extended) Observer article…

It’s amazing how quickly we take things for granted. Think back to 1993. John Major was Prime Minister, Tony Blair still looked like Bambi and Bill Clinton had just become President of the US. Only grown-ups had mobile phones, no one outside of academic and research labs had an email address, and a URL – now that was something exotic! Amazon was a river, a googol was the technical term for an enormous number (one followed by 100 zeros), eBay and iPod were typos, and there were quaint little shops on the high street called ‘travel agents’…

This was adapted, at the editor’s request, from a lecture I gave last week in the Science Museum.