Says it all, really.
Talking to machines
This morning’s Observer column:
Like many people nowadays, I do not talk on my iPhone as much as talk to it. That’s because it runs a program called Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) that works as an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator. It’s useful, in a way. If I ask it for “weather in London today”, it’ll present an hour-by-hour weather forecast. Tell it to “phone home” and it’ll make a decent effort to find the relevant number. Ask it to “text James” and it will come back with: “What do you want to say to James?” Not exactly Socratic dialogue, but it has its uses.
Ask Siri: “What’s the meaning of life?”, however, and it loses its nerve…
Trumped!
Lovely spoof, based on my favourite movie.
Springs eternal
Gone fishin’?
Street scene, Cambridge, February 2016.
Weathered
Going Dark? Dream on.
This morning’s Observer column:
The Apple v FBI standoff continues to generate more heat than light, with both sides putting their case to “the court of public opinion” — which, in this case, is at best premature and at worst daft. Apple has just responded to the court injunction obliging it to help the government unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernadino killers with a barrage of legal arguments involving the first and fifth amendments to the US constitution. Because the law in the case is unclear (there seems to be only one recent plausible precedent and that dates from 1977), I can see the argument going all the way to the supreme court. Which is where it properly belongs, because what is at issue is a really big question: how much encryption should private companies (and individuals) be allowed to deploy in a networked world?
In the meantime, we are left with posturing by the two camps, both of which are being selective with the actualité, as Alan Clark might have said…
The misogynistic Internet
From Sarah Jeong’s Berkman lecture on “The Internet of Garbage”.
Guess who’s missing
Anybody see where the UK went? Am I the only person in Britain with fibre to the home?
Brexit, 1997-style
This video was, I think, sent to every household in the UK in 1997. It will still resonate with some voters on June 23, I suspect.