Blogging is a global phenomenon. Every day, thousands of individuals cast their pearls of literary wisdom out into the internet ether, in the fond hope that others will read and engage with their thoughts.

The reality is probably that more than 99 per cent of all blog or forum entries are only read by the writer, or the writer and a vanishingly small group of people who also happen to be interested in the Austin A35 as a symbol of Britain’s post-war decline.

Dave Birch at Consult Hyperion – he is also a regular contributor to Financial World – has expended considerable energy on his Digital Money and Digital Identity blogs.

He is an expert, engaging and witty writer. What he writes is worth reading and amusing.

He decided to team up with the excellent Jane Adams, a journalist and editor with significant experience of the payments world, to create what they call a “blook” – in other words a book of a blog.

This “blook” is an experiment and so it has been published without a big publishing house or ISBN number.

The result deserves to be pursued as a concept, although I think this first attempt gets us only part of the way there.

The good news is that if – like me – you are a fully paid up, one hundred per cent proof digital money anorak, you will find plenty of material here to provoke you and to get you giggling.

The bad news is that if you don’t know your NFC from your CEFAS, you are going to get confused and lost pretty quickly and may very well give up. Adams and Birch have provided some structure to the posts and have edited them to improve the reading experience but the lack of narrative and the absence of a glossary means that this particular effort is for the digital money cognoscenti only.

But what they have done is highlight a very real problem – how to capture the wit and wisdom of the blogosphere – and that is arguably the real contribution of this little “blook”.

Link to original review: https://www.financialworld.co.uk/Reviews/the_digital_money_reader/11722.cfm