Emily Bell

We might think the web is something different, another world somewhere out there - or indeed in our devices - but as Emily Bell argues, the web is actually mapped onto our physical world: the real and the virtual are the same thing. Emily spent almost twenty years working at the Observer and then the Guardian, setting up Media Guardian website in 2000. Three years ago she and her family moved to New York and Emily became the Director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Living her life over two continents has caused her to consider the affect of cyberspace on actual space. Are we, as so many promised in the 90s, witnessing the death of distance? Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Recorded during the Edinburgh festival, speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.