The words undulating beneath the equally undulating moustache of digital visionary Ben Hammersley (the one on the right below) provoke a mixture of optimism and fear.
One minute you’re surfing towards a beautiful landscape of Spimes and Charter Cities, the next minute you are a “rat in the maze of twitter” endlessly inventing lies about yourself in order to avoid the disinhibited demons of trolls and teenagers. 
The amazing thing about Ben though, is that he approaches both with equal enthusiasm, as if he’s in on a joke dreamed up by a playful but brutal deity.
At today’s Books for Breakfast, co-hosted with Cogs Agency at Soho House, we were invited to get in on the joke with him, leafing through the pages of his ‘very booky’ book, 64 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW NOW FOR THEN.
Prepare to be surprised by the non-techie nature of this tome, especially considering Ben’s links to Wired Magazine and Tech City (he is No.10′s ambassador to the virtual East London state). In fact, given what Ben said about firms in which he would personally invest (naming no names, you had to be there), not one happened to be a digital/tech company, suggesting that the bubble of optimism around digital business models may well be about to burst (again). Businesses that use faster, better, smarter technology to give people access to their basic and complex human needs and desires however, will always be in demand.
So that’s all good.
I want to read that there book. On me kindle. So there.