Rare Earths, and Ancient Tech

Reg Events If you want to get ahead of the on-beach reading lists this year, you need to get down to our next series of Register Lectures.

We’ve lined up three lecture evenings that will leave you streets ahead of your colleagues. And as always, it’s you, the readers, who will be asking the questions of our top notch speaker lineup. All without you leaving the comfort of your seat and your nice cold pint.

Light and Dark on the Internet On May 21, Jamie Bartlett will take us on a journey along the dark underbelly of the internet. Jamie will talk us through the range of internet subcultures, from pro-anorexia sites, to webcam porn performers to cypher punks for his book The Dark Net. Talking of dark underbellies Jamie is director of the Center for Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos, so he can also explain just what effect tech is having on politics. Buy tickets here.

How the Economics of Rare Metals Really Add Up The Register’s favourite economist and rare metals miner Tim Worstall will highlight the absurd economics underlying the technology industry on June 4 by taking us on a journey around the world’s rare metal’s hotspots, We keep being told that we're about to run out of all these lovely tech metals and others. This is in fact incorrect. There's no metal or mineral we're going to run out of in any human timescale. The predictions of imminent Ecodammerung just aren't correct, and Tim will show you why. Buy tickets here.

From Cutting Edge to Museum Piece On June 24 we will be hosting The National Museum of Computing co-founder Kevin Murrell, who will be tell us how his team track down the UK’s vintage computers before returning them not just to museum condition, but full glorious noisy working order. Not only will you be hearing about living history, you’ll be able to see some exclusive video of the machines in action. Buy tickets here.

The doors will be open from 5.30pm, and we'll be kicking off the talk proper at 7.00. After 40 minutes we'll break for whatever refreshments take your fancy. We'll then have formal Q&A for another 40 minutes. It's your event and we'll head in direction the audience wants us to go.

With no more than 50 tickets available for each event, this is your chance to not just talk about the news, but to go head to head with one of the UK tech scene's key news makers.

After that, you're welcome to stick around and continue the conversation as long as you want - or at least till closing time.