Guy Kewney
April 14, 2010 1:05 PM   Subscribe

Guy Kewney was an early and prolific writer in UK technology publishing, most renowned for his ‘Newsprint’ column in Personal Computer World (Guy’s take on PCW’s history and decline & more writing for The Register). He died last week. His most recent project was newswireless, his personal blog wryly and honestly recorded his illness, and he was a respected and much missed man (Teblog has a list of the many tributes).

Previously when he didn’t appear on BBC News 24 and Guy Goma did.
posted by Huw (7 comments total)
 
Ugh. Colorectal cancer that metastasized to the liver.

The name rang an immediate bell for me due to the Guy Goma incident; Kewney was scheduled to go on to discuss the most recent scrap between Apple Computer (of anything-with-an-"i"-prefix fame) and Apple Corp (of Beatles fame), and Goma, who had come for an IT job interview, was mistakenly escorted to the newsroom instead. Kewney's response in the aftermath was quite good-humored, and I respected him for it.

Sad to hear of his passing; sadder to hear of it after the fact. I'll read through some of his blog archives today.
posted by The Confessor at 1:24 PM on April 14, 2010


Um, this is not what I remember reading. Maybe it was a manufactured memory?
posted by The Confessor at 1:26 PM on April 14, 2010


It's hard to overstate the importance of Guy Kewney to the UK IT industry - and beyond. He took people like Michael Dell seriously when few others did, and for a long time was the one person you had to get on side if you were to be taken seriously. Not that he was ever to be gotten on side: he liked what you did or he didn't, and that was that.

He was also an early and enthusiastic adopter of new-fangled online stuff, although his career arc closely followed that of the dead-tree tech press and he was finding it hard to place stuff in the latter years. There are an awful lot of lessons for today's pundits in what he did and how he did it: without claiming to know more than his targets - quite the opposite! - he just asked the right questions and let the answers speak for themselves.

(no, I never got used to his habit of using ! in subclauses)
posted by Devonian at 1:42 PM on April 14, 2010


Oh no! :-(

I had no idea he was ill. I used to work at PC magazine back around 1992-3, and Guy was a friend and an inspiration - clever, witty and warm, with no ego. He was always willing to share insights, advice and war stories; patient with naive questions and encouraging of insightful ones. I haven't kept up with my industry friends from back then, so this comes as a sad shock to me.

When I had a story spiked due to its political aspects - a member of the UK parliament soliciting bribes from a computer industry association, which did not fit with the magazine's focus on products (there was no Register back then), Guy stood up for me to get paid for the time I had put in on it and made some phone calls on my behalf to Paul foot, who later covered the story for Private Eye.

Triviafilter: though well-known among the digiterati for his donnish air and predilection for bow-ties - he was by far the best-dressed person working at Ziff-Davis - few were aware that he was also a talented singer. He was a leading member of his local church choir for many years, despite being a total atheist. This ability to reconcile his philosophical and social leanings made a deep and positive impression on me.

I am very sorry to read of his passing.
posted by anigbrowl at 2:06 PM on April 14, 2010 [4 favorites]


.
Guy was good.
posted by asok at 2:03 AM on April 15, 2010


Oh my good grief, that's a huge shock. Last time I saw him was on a chance meeting on a tube station platform somewhere in town. We chewed the fat, reminiscing and stuff. That's so sad. He was a a true veteran and a nice guy.

My lasting memory of him was being strapped in the seats of a Flarion demo car watching videos over high speed data at 120 km/h in Holland back in 2004. Here's a shot of him doing some *serious* testing in the back seat. :)

Dude, you'll be missed.
posted by Duug at 2:07 AM on April 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


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posted by ceri richard at 11:57 AM on April 15, 2010


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