“I was trying to write a script in a small room with nothing but a laptop for company. Perfect conditions for quiet contemplation – but thanks to the accompanying net connection, I may as well have been sharing the space with a 200-piece marching band. I entered the room at 10.30 a.m. Because I was interested in the phone-hacking story, I’d set up an automatic Twitter search for the term ‘Coulson’ (eavesdropping, essentially: he’d hate it). Whenever someone mentioned his name, a window would pop... up in the corner of my screen to alert me. Often their messages included a link to a webpage, which I’d end up skim-reading. This was on top of the other usual web distractions: emails, messageboards, self-deluding ‘research’ on Wikipedia, and so on. By 1 p.m. I’d written precisely three lines of script. Yet my fingers had scarcely left the keyboard. My brain felt like a loose, whirring wheel that span with an audible buzz yet never quite touched the ground. At around 2 p.m., Google announced the final straw.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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