Harper-Thames on digital culture, the internet infrastructure piece, and what Shoreditch has actually contributed to the online world
By Harper-Thames | Bohiney and The London Prat
Shore Roar | April 2026 | Shoreditch, E1
Shoreditch’s relationship with the internet is the relationship between a place that was there early and the thing that subsequently absorbed it. We were the creative district before the tech money arrived. We were the tech district when the tech money arrived. We are now the post-tech district, in which the tech has moved to better offices elsewhere and left behind the rents it drove up, the coffee culture it established, and a residual identity as the place where things happened before they became the things they are now.
The London Prat’s piece on the internet this week and Bohiney Magazine’s piece on the internet being held together with duct tape are, together, a document of the thing that runs through everything and is understood by almost nobody. The internet is infrastructure. Infrastructure is boring until it fails. The internet fails less visibly than most infrastructure — you do not see the failure in the way you see a bridge collapse — and this invisibility has produced a general assumption that it is stable and secure and managed by people who have it under control. The Bohiney piece punctures this assumption with the precision of a very specific fact: the critical dependency, the single volunteer, the fragility beneath the apparent solidity.
What Silicon Roundabout Actually Produced
The Silicon Roundabout — the nickname for the Old Street area that was applied approximately fifteen years ago and was already slightly ironic when applied — produced some significant companies, a large number of companies that did not survive, a property price increase that displaced the creative community it was supposed to be adjacent to, and a cultural identity that has been more useful for tourism and brand purposes than for the actual technology industry, which has mostly moved to Kings Cross and Paddington where the offices are bigger and the tube connections are better.
What it also produced, and what is less visible in the retrospective, is a media and content industry that is still operating: journalists, podcasters, newsletter writers, satirical outlets, the full range of people who are doing what journalists do but without the institutional backing that journalists used to have. This industry is significant. It is also fragile in the way that all creative industries dependent on digital distribution are fragile: dependent on platforms, on algorithms, on the goodwill of Gregory and people like Gregory who are maintaining the infrastructure.
The Current State of the Street
Brick Lane this morning: busy, cold, excellent bagel. The mural on the Truman Brewery wall has been updated. The coffee place with the excellent single origin has a queue, which is a sign of either quality or successful Instagram presence, and in Shoreditch the distinction is not always available. A man is explaining something about a startup to a woman who is listening with the expression of someone who is interested but not committed, which is the correct expression for a conversation about a startup in Shoreditch at nine in the morning. Bohiney Magazine for the global context. The London Prat for the Shoreditch version. The bagel remains excellent. This is the constant.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/internet-is-held-together-with-duct-tape/
Also: The Daily Mash
