I searched the boards and couldn’t find a thread about this, so I started one- four months late.
He was an Oxford grad who worked in computer intelligence, namely the Singularity. He predicted the modern internet in his 70s book The Wired World. His most recent book, from '06, was The Meaning of the 21st Century.
Four months ago he drowned after having a heart attack while swimming off the coast of his private island near Bermuda.
Had he lived to be 100, maybe he would have seen the Singularity and even lived forever.
He dreamt of a world in which people would be more connected than anyone could imagine, post-Singularity. And in the end he died alone in the ocean, betrayed by his own heart and found floating lifelessly by a kayaker.
I don’t even know what the fuck to say about that.