|
Guy Kewney
|
|
Guy Kewney |
|
This is posted on Guy's personal domain name - which I had the pleasure of registering on his behalf back in June 1997. Guy used a variety of online identities and email addresses over the years, some of which are repeatable; many of which became unusable through the mountains of spam that inevitably appeared as the internet expanded. Exposed email addresses were ruthlessly harvested by the spambots, and their users soon discovered the truth of that old story about a grain of rice on one square of a chessboard. Possibly to counteract this process, Guy once used a "certain address" on a domain name that was likely to be trapped by an obscenity filter, and this very effectively reinforced the impression that Guy was uncompromisingly Guy. An all-too rare chap, without artifice of any sort, in a new and fast developing industry, bursting with ambitious folks for whom the line between honesty, BS and outrageous lies was all too easily blurred - but everyone soon learned that precious little got past Guy. He was respected like few others in a generally insane industry. Like many IT scribes, and despite his obvious pre-eminence as the doyen of the trade, various publishing industry overlords did him few favours over the years. Most publishing directors' ideal writer is one who can be relied upon to stroke the egos of advertisers, and who fills out an expenses form as assiduously as the next intake of MPs will doubtless pretend to; they do not always include a ruthlessly perceptive and honest scribe, who knows where pretty much every body of an entire industry has been buried over 30 years. The industry and the world is a poorer place for his untimely absence, and the young hacks (and hackettes) who will no longer have the opportunity to meet the legend and learn, may never know what they missed. There are a handful of others who have spanned the rise, decline and online reinvention of the UK's IT publishing scene, one such is the redoubtable David Tebbutt who has managed an archive of Guy memorabilia. Hopefully this page provides the more succinct and obvious shortcut to: http://www.tebbo.com/StuffForGuy.pdf Guy's own mobile project still remains in stasis at www.newswireless.net "the Home of Guy Kewney's Mobile Campaign", where his last byline is dated 23 March 2010. WSP+++ |
