Twitteretter

  Have you read Isaac Asimov’s short story ‘The Last Question’? If you haven’t, you really should. I came across it after it was referenced by Michio Kaku in ‘The future of humanity’. It is a beautiful story, and it may have the best ending I’ve ever read (I may be a bit biased as I just read it, and it is much more present in my mind than others, but it is truly stand up and clap spectacular). If you wanted to get an idea of what it is about – and I really advise against this, you should just read it, it is only 15 pages – you could do it by reading my Twitteretter number 10, ‘On God and Evolution’. At the time I wrote it, I was struck but what I hoped may be an original thought, inspired by listening to a Richard Dawkins interview. A couple of years later, I discover that Asimov, at least, beat me to it by a number of years. The feeling is bittersweet. Is it better to be original, or to share an idea with someone of Asimov’s stature? Both are good and, since it is the latter, I t...

Few things are more dangerous or effective in social change than the surreptitious revision of commonly held concepts. When I was growing up, socialism, centrism, conservatism and extremism had a meaning. Today, these terms are still used, but their meaning has changed. Slowly, and under cover of night.  The centre has moved to where the moderate (or even not so moderate) right used to be, liberal economy, small state. Today’s socialism would not be recognised by a 1970s socialist, never mind by Marx and his acolytes. Conservatism has usurped the political space of ultranationalism. These changes are dangerous, as they get the less attentive citizens to make, by inertia, choices they would not otherwise make. They exploit our tendency to oversimplify by self defining to lead us to make choices we would not subscribe if well understood. Today it is more important than ever to attentively analyse. Beware names and labels, they are exercises in misdirection, may not be what they seem ...

If you had asked me, at the end of last year, what professional acronyms would have graduated into general public consciousness in 2020, PPE would not have been anywhere in my answer. Such graduation is normally a sign that a new technology has really made it and is becoming widely adopted, and therefore marks new steps in human progress. For this year, I would have probably chosen the likes of AI (Artificial Intelligence), DL (Deep Learning), IoT (Internet of Things) and VR (Virtual Reality). I’m sure I am missing something important. All these are breakthrough technologies which represent a step forward in humanity’s capabilities. But the acronym of the year is PPE. Everyone knows what it means, everyone talks about it every day. There is a technological element to making PPE that affords the right level of protection, but it is hardly a breakthrough. We could argue that coronavirus is not only knocking back the economy, but also human evolution. What will be the next acronyms? Le...

If you happen to be one of those people who, as I sometimes do, reads science fiction, you will be aware that one of the most common expectations for human evolution into the distant future is that we will evolve to have small bodies, atrophied limbs and supersized heads, to house our overdeveloped brains. This expectation ignores the possibilities offered by bioengineering and mechanical technology integration, but that is for another post. My observation during this lockdown, however, is that most people seem to spend their time lying about the house, randomly snacking on junk food and wasting a lot of time on social media. This is a lost opportunity, when so much time for exercise of the body and the mind is available. And it presents us with an alternative possible evolutionary path, in which we evolve to have large, round, flabby bodies, tiny heads to house dwindling brains and huge thumbs to contribute to the cacophony of nonsense prevalent in social networks. Your preference?...