I was surprised as anyone when I found myself accidentally using a large language model (that is, an “AI” chatbot) to write some prose for me. I was twice as surprised when I found myself impressed by what it wrote.
Last month, an airline stranded me overnight in New York City when my flight to LA was canceled due to an air traffic control snafu. The airline rep at the ...Read More
On June 20, 2023, I will be awarded an Honourary Doctor of Laws from York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, in Toronto, Canada. The text below is the speech I will give.
Goodness me, it is a gigantic honour to be here today, and to be recognized in this way. I’m profoundly grateful to the faculty and administration here at York, and to my friends and family ...Read More
Within the very first year of operation, 1878, Bell’s company learned a sharp lesson about combining teenage boys and telephone switchboards. Putting teenage boys in charge of the phone system brought swift and consistent disaster. Bell’s chief engineer described them as ‘Wild Indians.’ The boys were openly rude to customers. They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick’s Day ...Read More
As I type these words, a mass exodus is underway from Twitter and Facebook. After decades of eye-popping growth, these social media sites are contracting at an alarming rate.
In some ways, this shouldn’t surprise us. All the social networks that preceded the current generation experienced this pattern: SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace, and Bebo all exploded onto the scene. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, everyone ...Read More
If the bullies at the school gate steal your kid’s lunch money every day, it doesn’t matter how much lunch money you give your kid, he’s not gonna get lunch. But how much lunch money you give your kid does matter – to the bullies. Hell, they might even start a campaign: “The children of Jack Valenti Elementary School are going hungry! Congress must step in to give those kids ...Read More
“Five thousand quatloos that the newcomers will have to be destroyed.”
Quatloos. Credits. Euros. Dollars. Dogecoin.
Wait, Dogecoin?
At some point in your life, you’ve probably asked yourself, “What is money?” There’s something existential about pulling a bank-note out of your wallet and asking yourself, “Why does so much of my waking life revolve around getting more of these slips of green paper?” (Outside of the USA, you may ask ...Read More
We’re all trapped on a bus.
The bus is barreling towards a cliff.
Beyond the cliff is a canyon plunge any of us will be lucky to survive.
Even if we survive, none of us know how we’ll climb out of that deep canyon.
Some of us want to yank the wheel.
The bus is going so fast that yanking the wheel could cause the bus to roll.
There might ...Read More
Greetings from the past.
I write these words six weeks before you will read them. I used to do this all the time, back in the glory days of print. Hell, I spent most of the ’90s writing a monthly guide to interesting websites, which came out two months after I submitted it.
I’ve been writing six columns per year for Locus for fourteen years and I have not missed ...Read More
Science fiction has a longstanding love-hate relationship with the tech tycoon. The literature is full of billionaire inventors, sometimes painted as system-bucking heroes, at other times as megalomanical supervillains.
From time to time, we even manage to portray one of these people in a way that hews most closely to reality: ordinary mediocrities, no better than you or I, whose success comes down to a combination of luck and a ...Read More
From 1811-1816, a secret society styling themselves “the Luddites” smashed textile machinery in the mills of England. Today, we use “Luddite” as a pejorative referring to backwards, anti-technology reactionaries.
This proves that history really is written by the winners.
In truth, the Luddites’ cause wasn’t the destruction of technology – no more than the Boston Tea Party’s cause was the elimination of tea, or Al Qaeda’s cause was the end ...Read More
Margaret Thatcher was the least science-fictional world leader in modern history.
Her motto was “There is no alternative,” a phrase she repeated so often it became an acronym: “TINA.”
She was referring to capitalism, asserting that there is no conceivable alternative. It was a cheap but remarkably effective rhetorical device, treating a demand as an observation. The true meaning of TINA isn’t “No alternative is possible,” but rather, “Stop trying ...Read More
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