The 6th Belgrade Design Week opens on Monday and runs throughout next week, seeking to bring “the leading global creative-thinkers of the 21st Century” under one roof.

City dwellers and suburban citizens are to be offered an unprecedented opportunity to become farmers of a 2,500-acre estate, without so much as getting mud on their boots or dirt on their hands.

Sometimes one needs to read programme-notes in advance, sometimes it’s wise not to. It was definitely a mistake to read what concept-choreographer Klaus Obermaier had to say about the ‘live 3-D visuals’ he was going to impose (with the aid of a dancer) on the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’.

Waitrose is taking the fight to Ocado, the online grocer, by opening a massive "virtual shop" in west London this October to ramp up the delivery of orders from its website in the capital.

Anyone who saw Stuart Baggs 'The Brand' squirm his way into the semi-finals of The Apprentice in December knows that, in Lord Sugar's boardroom at least, the gift of the gab can get you a long way. In real-world business, however, it may not always be necessary. A growing number are realising that it is possible to gain the required acumen without engaging in the cut and thrust of face-to-face negotiation.

Once a pioneer of virtual-reality technologies and still a designer of digital aids to surgery, Jaron Lanier was there at the birth of our hi-tech dreams. Yet since those early days of rapture, he believes that digital culture has gone so deeply wrong that within it "human creativity and understanding... are treated as worthless".

Foreign Secretary William Hague appealed today for governments to come together to agree a set of rules amid growing fears of "cyber war" between states.

The vaunted galleries and chandeliered corridors of museums across the world have opened virtual doors to art lovers using the technology behind Google Street View.

The foreman of the jury that cleared four men of plotting to release ricin on Britain's streets called last night for a complete overhaul of counter-terror legislation.

Pope Benedict gave a qualified blessing to social networking yesterday, praising its potential but warning that online friendships are no substitute for real human contact.

Nick Clegg signalled today that key elements of control orders would be reformed as he pledged to "resurrect" civil liberties in Britain.