He was now on secondment to MI6, with its focus on foreign targets and intelligence-gathering, becoming more of a spy than a desk-bound technician, although Williams would shortly be called back to GCHQ to work on a new and ambitious project.
"Everything else — putting forward grand theories, gathering followers, becoming a 'guru' — leaves me cold," he once said.
Technology for surveillance and data gathering is "becoming more powerful every day," he said.
For the most part, the recollections are suffused with gentle humor and understanding, though like all such reminiscences they have their longueurs; "This Is a Test," though only 75 minutes and intermissionless, seems after a while to be treading the waters of monotony before gathering momentum and becoming pointed and poignant toward its conclusion, when Mr. Conway leaves home for California.
Now that sap-gathering is becoming more commercial, some environmentalists have criticized tree tapping as "cruel".
The country's cavernous appetite for a diverse array of products also means that cooks whose granola might otherwise have remained legendary only at church socials and family gatherings are becoming players on the national food scene.
"The issue is gathering a momentum and becoming unstoppable.
Thus a rabid murmur spread around school in advance of our mate's appearance, gathering detail and texture, becoming real.
"The vote-gathering machines are becoming a thing of the past".
Sites like themeparkinsider.com, which asks travelers to report on their experiences at theme parks, represent a kind of communal data-gathering that is becoming recognized as a form of journalism.
But in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA surveillance, tech companies are not always comfortable playing a role in government intelligence-gathering, and are becoming more proactive about defining their boundaries.
