It's a pity that new media has never really thrown up a replacement for those sort of columnists, isn't it? Negroponte in Wired, Douglas Adams in MacUser, and (slightly more obscure!) Dave Langford's work in various Amstrad PCW magazines in the UK.

Slashdot did experiment a little with Jon Katz, most notably his 'Voices from the Hellmouth' series, but he was never really aiming to sound the same note of wry detachment as those magazine greats.

It's a pity - I'd rather read a monthly column of that sort than any amount of pointless bickering on Twitter.

Om too. Bad year.

Was going to say exactly this. They were the most independent of thinkers in the industry