Stephen Fry: 'It's staggering how people expect online services to be utterly free'

The release of Stephen Fry’s latest volume of autobiography, More Fool Me, has provoked a stir for its revelations of his past cocaine use in various high-profile venues, from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament.

Predictably, most of the broadcast interviews around the new book’s release focused on the drug-taking rather than another well-known aspect of Fry’s life: his interest in technology.

It goes further than reviewing iPhones for the Guardian. Fry has been involved with a number of startups as an investor and also with some as an adviser, from Summly to SwiftKey.

Meanwhile, the launch of More Fool Me is accompanied by an ambitious global hackathon, YourFry, which will see developers and digital makers exploring the text, audio and themes of his work.

Fry doesn’t do print interviews any more – a section of his recent one-man show at the Royal Festival Hall in London expanded on his dislike of newspaper profile writers, based on past experiences.

But he did sit down with the Guardian for a video interview before the concert to talk technology, starting with a question about YourFry, and the wider crossover between literature and technology, for better or worse.

Fry also talked about his excitement and fear about the implications of some new technologies: including the prospect of insurers and employers requiring personal genomic data before taking on new people.

“Knowledge is power, but power of course, in human hands as we know, is dangerous, and especially in institutional hands. But it’s also fantastically freeing when it’s in individual hands,” he said.

Fry also talked about his personal use of devices, and the question of online negativity, including “weird, repulsive trolling” on news sites and YouTube.

Fry also talked about Twitter, and his expectations of the social network at a time when it’s trying to make money from advertising without alienating its core users.

“It is quite staggering how people have expected all kinds of services to be utterly free for so long, without really understanding that they’re not free,” he said.

He also responded to a question about internet services from Amazon and Netflix to Facebook becoming cultural filters with the suggestion that this could be a positive trend, if they approach recommendations in a certain way.

“Why not say to someone who’s just bought a Dan Brown novel: ‘Well, you’ve read that. Why not now try some literature? Here’s Oliver Twist’. Or here’s Great Expectations or The Great Gatsby or whatever it is. ‘Just try something that’s properly written’,” he said.