The PR Blog

From Floppy Disks to the Cyber Monster: How the Internet Changed Us

It all really began with my boys in the basement.

I didn’t know them, not properly. There was no glossy “About Us” page, no mission statement written by a marketing department, no stock photos of smiling executives with their arms folded. Just a small overseas outfit that felt as though a handful of clever young blokes had commandeered a few servers, plugged them in somewhere underground, and decided to see what they could build.

They answered emails. Actual emails. If something broke, someone fixed it. If you had a problem, you weren’t funnelled into a system...you spoke to a person. Even then, I sensed it mattered that there were names at the other end, not departments. That if something went wrong, responsibility lived somewhere human.

You weren’t funnelled into a system -  you spoke to a person.

At the time, it didn’t feel remarkable. It was simply how things were.

The internet itself felt like that too.

It is one of the great temptations of modern geopolitics: to stare at the latest crisis while a dozen others quietly simmer in the background.

Right now, Venezuela dominates headlines for many in the West  -  and I understand why.

Energy security, regional instability, great‑power manoeuvring and ideological fault lines all collide there. But while eyes are drawn westward, other flashpoints remain very much on the boil, and among the most dangerous of them is South Asia.

Kashmir did not cool simply because attention drifted.

A Flashpoint That Never Went Away

When this article was first written in late 2024, the argument was straightforward:

Kashmir is not merely a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, but a pressure point where history, religion, water security, nuclear deterrence and regional alliances converge.

That assessment has not weakened. It has hardened.

When America “Runs” a Country, the World Should Pay Attention

As 2026 stumbles out of the gate, we’re told not to panic. Nothing to see here. Just the United States announcing that American forces will temporarily run the country.

Temporarily, of course. That word has an impressive history.

The problem with pretending the world is rules-based is that eventually someone stops pretending. The U.S. seizure of Venezuela isn’t just a regional intervention -  it’s a declaration that the polite fictions of global diplomacy have expired. What follows won’t stay neatly contained in South America.

President Trump justified the move on narco-terrorism, election interference, and the need to secure Venezuela’s oil. Fair enough - if you accept that the world’s largest proven oil reserves just happen to sit beneath one of the most corrupt regimes on earth, and Washington suddenly developed a conscience.- China, unsurprisingly, is furious. Sovereignty, international law, all that jazz. Beijing is very big on sovereignty - particularly other people’s.

But if you think this is just about Venezuela, you’re missing the point entirely.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s a signal flare.

There are moments in history when telling the truth plainly becomes dangerous -  not because the truth has changed, but because power has decided it must be controlled.

We like to believe those moments belong to distant lands or darker eras, ruled by uniforms and jackboots. Yet they have a habit of returning dressed in softer language, justified by good intentions, and enforced not with rifles but regulations. When authorities begin deciding what may be said “for the common good,” truth does not vanish. It adapts. It learns to move quietly. It hides.

America learned this lesson during World War II, when one of its most decisive weapons was not forged from steel, but from language.

In 1942, as the war in the Pacific raged and Japanese codebreakers proved alarmingly adept, the United States turned to an unlikely solution: young Navajo Marines, speaking an ancient, complex language that outsiders neither understood nor respected.

As a child, we spent our Christmas holidays at a remote coastal sheep farm in New Zealand. We didn’t know those moments were precious at the time. We only know now, because they are rarer.

The memories that made us were not accidents. They were given -  by parents, communities, and a world that allowed time to linger. If we want the next generation to stand firm, they will need memories of their own to stand on.

A culture that no longer remembers how it grew struggles to know what it should protect.

And so I found myself heading down memory lane to a time that I still cherish over 60 years later. 

From Dusty Gulch Part One of the Honklanistan Series 
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble

Dusty Gulch has always prided itself on being hard to surprise.

It has survived droughts, dubious leadership initiatives, interpretive art installations, and at least three “temporary” committees that never went away. Yet even by local standards, the recent arrival of Honklans from the desert realm of Hoklanistan has been… noticeable.

The Honklans first appeared following the invitation of Prentis Penjani, who described the initial Pigoose hybrid as “a cultural ambassador with excellent posture.” At the time, few suspected that one bird would soon become many.