Mark O'Connell

1 week ago | irishtimes.com | Mark O'Connell

One of the most powerful scenes in The Settlers,Louis Theroux’s brilliant new documentary about the Israeli settler movement, comes in the final minutes of the film, which was broadcast earlier this week on BBC Two. Theroux and his small crew are at a festival at Evyatar, one of the numerous settlements in the Palestinian West Bank deemed illegal under international law. He is there to speak with one of the festival’s speakers, Daniella Weiss, leader of the extreme right Nachala settler movement.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mark O'Connell

During an interview published earlier this month on the website Vox, the American technologist and writer Jaron Lanier came out with one of the more unsettling remarks I’ve encountered recently. Lanier is one of the more interesting of Silicon Valley’s in-house intellectuals. He was an early developer of virtual reality technologies in the 1980s, and is often credited (and credits himself) with coining the term to describe that technology.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Mark O'Connell

Some years ago, en route from JFK Airport to Manhattan, I had a conversation with a cab driver that has remained with me ever since. I say a conversation, but it was mostly a monologue on his part. He was an old guy with a strong New York accent, and the cab was a so-called gypsy cab – one of those unregulated and unlicensed taxis that can’t be hailed on the street, and which have presumably mostly been driven from the market by ride-sharing apps.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark O'Connell

I’ve been writing this column for a year now, and mostly it’s been a blessing. It has been, for the most part, a welcome weekly change from the otherwise incremental rhythm of my writing, a way of forcing me to think through my responses to the bewildering flux of world events, and an opportunity to do so for a readership that might not otherwise seek out my writing.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Mark O'Connell

A couple of weeks ago, a short video clip detailing the morning routine of one Ashton Hall, a personal trainer and fitness influencer, went viral online. Once you watch the clip – and I am absolutely recommending that you do – you will see why: it occupies the big sweet spot of social media virality, both completely serious and utterly absurd, and wildly and inexplicably compelling.