Articles on various topics – philosophy, sci-fi, technology, writing, history, politics, literature, culture, etc.
A number of years ago – back when I had a literary agent – I pitched her a book on luck. Luck is a curious thing, I said. You might think it’s just random chance. The coin toss comes up…
The autumn equinox marks the point where – here in the northern hemisphere – having been held briefly in balance, the days begin to shorten and the nights extend as we commence the journey into winter. It’s a time where…
“Outside of a dog,” wrote Marx, “a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” (That’s Groucho, not Karl, by the way). But who has time to read these days? We’re all too…
What pet owner hasn’t at some point looked into the face of their little furry chum and wondered what it’s thinking? Wouldn’t it be great to be like Dr Doolittle, to imagine “chatting to a chimp” and being able to…
“Have you had a productive day?” someone recently asked me, and for some reason it suddenly struck me just how embedded into our lives the notion of productivity is. What am I? A dairy cow? As if a day that…
Your dad is a Luddite, perhaps, or maybe your mum; your gran, almost certainly. Like the sweet old Italian Nonna bewildered and amazed by Google’s home assistant, older generations often show less facility and more reluctance when adopting technology into…
I read the other day that Microsoft has plans to “resurrect” people from their “social data”. This resurrection would draw on such things as “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages, and written letters”, which would all be used…