Jack Schofield (journalist)

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Jack Schofield
Schofield in 2009
Born(1947-10-30)30 October 1947
Died31 March 2020(2020-03-31) (aged 72)
OccupationJournalist

Jack Schofield (30 October 1947 – 31 March 2020)[1] was a British technology journalist. He wrote the Ask Jack column for The Guardian[2] and preceding that covered technology for the newspaper from 1983 to 2010. He edited photography and computing periodicals and produced a number of books on photography and on computing, including The Darkroom Book (1981).

He died on 31 March 2020 at the age of 72, following a heart attack on 27 March.[3]

Career

Schofield edited various photography magazines during the 1970s:[4] Photo Technique, Film Making, You & Your Camera (a partwork), and Zoom as well as the journal of the Royal Photographic Society, The Photographic Journal.[5]

In 1983, he started writing a weekly computer column in Futures Micro Guardian, from its first issue, in The Guardian.[4] He also became editor of the monthly Practical Computing[4] in 1984. In September 1985 he joined The Guardian's staff to launch Computer Guardian, the newspaper's weekly computer supplement.[4] He continued to cover technology for The Guardian until 2010 when he switched to solely writing the newspaper's Ask Jack column.[2][6]

Schofield also wrote on computing for

ZDNet.[8][9] He produced a number of books on photography and on computing.[5]

Whilst working for The Guardian, Schofield published what he referred to as his Laws of Computing which sought to help people understand the consequences of decisions about their data:[10]

  1. Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out[11]
  2. Data doesn't really exist unless you have two copies of it[12]
  3. The easier it is for you to access your data, the easier it is for someone else to access your data[10]

Publications

References

  1. ^ Keegan, Victor (3 April 2020). "Jack Schofield obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Guardian hack fails to Ask Jack about IE popups". The Inquirer. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 27 June 2018.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ^ Hern, Alex (1 April 2020). "Jack Schofield, Guardian's Ask Jack tech columnist, dies at 72". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Schofield, Jack; Arthur, Charles (16 December 2009). "Guardian technology section 1983-2009, by the people who edited it". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  5. ^ a b Schofield, Jack (21 February 2007). "Ars Technica reviews Adobe's Lightroom". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  6. ^ Schofield, Jack (18 January 2010). "What happened to Ask Jack?". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  7. ^ Editorial, Reuters. "Columns". Reuters. Retrieved 27 June 2018. {{cite web}}: |first1= has generic name (help)
  8. ^ Schofield, Jack. "Jack Schofield – Freelance blogger". ZDNet. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
  9. ^ Jack Schofield, "Nominet Presents The Story of the Web: Celebrating 25 years of the World Wide Web". Nominet UK. Retrieved 27 June 2018
  10. ^ a b Schofield, Jack (9 July 2008). "Eureka! I've discovered the Third Law of computing". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  11. ^ Schofield, Jack (24 July 2003). "Jack Schofield: Schofield's First Law of Computing". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  12. ^ Schofield, Jack (14 February 2008). "Jack Schofield: Never assume your data is safe, even if it's online". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  13. OCLC 11786409
    .

External links