Back from Zurich...

... and I think I'm recovering. There is something very odd about a place where I can take in an IBM press conference - IBM, for heaven's sake - where the presenter says "This is a nanobot we're going to INJECT INTO YOUR EYEBALL and GUIDE IT WITH INVISIBLE POWER RAYS and let it SCRAPE YOUR RETINA. Okthxbi.", and I just sit there and think "Oh, that's cool.". It's only now that I've returned to Holloway that I begin to see quite how strange it all is.

Once upon a time, I went to IBM press conferences and they buried me beneath acronyms about storage and networking, and I learned very little. I'm still trying to imagine what it would be like going to a MIcrosoft press conference where Ballmer described a nanobot whose job it was to corrode me from within, and I thought it a good idea.

Ah, Switzerland. A country where you can't get a sandwich after ten thirty, but you can buy cannabis tea from vending machines in the main railway station. Perhaps there's a reason that nanotechnology, CERN and the World Wide Web all come from the place...