Monday, April 09, 2012

JM ARCHIVE: WEB SITES: TOM PAINE/ ARTHUR C. CLARKE (1996-1997)

Copy of CEQUEL PLUS1159

All this digital activity led me to join forces with Richard Quarrell and Gordon Adgey to found a web company as a spin-off of Richard’s company Cequel. Hence the name Cequel Plus. Hence the logo: C=+. You can tell Richard was a graphic designer. Out of the maelstrom of projects that circulated round Cequel Plus in those heady digital days I would like to highlight two:

PAINE IN THE NET

CEQUEL PLUS1159

‘Paine in the Net’ was the title of the first proper site for Tom Paine on the internet, which our company built and launched at the Jubilee Room at the House of Commons on July 4th 1996 – the first and possibly only time this great radical and writer had been celebrated in the House. Tony Benn MP was present as was Lewes’ then Conservative MP, the late Tim Rathbone.

It was a truly special affair designed to generate media attention for the site and to link Paine’s ideas and writings with the work of a number of campaigning groups - Charter 88, Liberty, the Campaign for the Freedom of Information and Demos - who were seeking to stimulate debate about democratic values in the digital age.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

CEQUEL PLUS2160

This review appeared in the Financial Times on 30th June 1997. I got to do a phone interview with the great man when he was at  his home in Sri Lanka. Arthur died less than a year later. See Previous Post: IN MEMORIAM/ARTHUR C. CLARKE

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