My wife Fiona asked me this evening why, when I spend all day at the computer at work, I still want to turn on the computer when I come home.

I said, with hardly a pause, that it’s because the computer and the Internet have become a part of the space in which I live, and I always know where I am. Being offline is like pretending Bristol doesn’t exist; but I always know where I am.

She said, and I agreed, that it’s kinda like the way I need to know what the weather is going to be tomorrow (so, you know, she understands me).

And, you know, I think it might be true…

I’m not sure whether to be pleased with this new realisation about how my brain works, amazed at the extent to which the abstract space of the Internet has invaded my sense of the world—or disturbed that I was able to pull such an answer to such a loaded question right out of my butt.