Daniel Soar

It must​ be tough to be an English novelist. Or at least a certain type of English novelist, of a certain English vintage, from a certain English background. There are duties to uphold, expectations to fulfil. It’s easy to be embarrassed to be English, embarrassed by privilege, entitlement and insular prejudice. It’s easy to feel guilt by association. Oddly, this means that the...

Food​ is money. Or it can be, if you know how to transform it into profit. Ajinomoto Co. is Japan’s biggest producer of condiments and seasonings, with annual revenues of ¥1 trillion, or around $9 billion. Its most successful product by far – on shelves across East Asia since 1908 – is Aji-No-Moto, often sold in a little glass bottle with a trademark red label....

The​ usual four white walls, but in each corner a screen, surveilling the gallery. Normally the display is pale pink but at times it flicks to grey, indicating that someone somewhere is watching. It could be you, at home, clicking on the website for Octopus (2020), the installation project by Trevor Paglen that allowed the stay-at-homes, the voyeurs, the disabled, the bored, the ill, the...

Sometimes​ another world is there – you glimpse it out of the corner of your eye. In 1965 an engineer called Ivan Sutherland – he had effectively invented the whole field of computer graphics by writing a program called Sketchpad which allowed users to draw directly onto a screen – had a vision of the future. ‘The ultimate display,’ he wrote in a conference...