Hello.
Welcome to this piece of internet I bought
This is my 'best of me' page. It's a portfolio, not a blog; a collection of the work that I've done over the years of which I am most proud. This is why, in one or two cases (ahem), some of the pieces are getting a little bit dusty. I keep them here because I still think each of them is important - and that as a whole, they give you a very quick scrapbook-view of what is important to me.
I find the future fascinating. I find a lot of reporting on the future frustrating. Stories with frightening headlines do better web traffic, which skews the public view on where we're heading (and is why so many articles about robots are illustrated by stills from The Terminator franchise). This makes for gloomy reading, speculation masquerading as information, and lots of people saying this or that will be bad, brilliant or apocalyptic - with fewer and fewer people bothering to listen or believe them each time.
This is what I like most to investigate: who is promising what and why, and who the winners and losers of the next great scientific and technological upheavals will be. The future is not a Netflix series: its our job to understand it and do things, not write off inconvenient truths as plot lines we don't like.
I don't like catastrophising and I don't like evangelism. I like days reading academic papers like the responsible nerd that I am, in preparation for interviews with people who are the best in their fields. I like talking to people who know more than I do. I like taking everything I know, every paper I've read and every interview I've squeezed out of my (very) old dictaphone and turning that into an article that (I hope), everyone will finish feeling informed and smart and like I was just a little bit funnier than they were expecting me to be going in.
If you'd like to get in touch, or commission me to write for you, here's my contact page.
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Russia Has Turned Ukraine Into a Giant Minefield - An urgent, underreported catastrophe: Russian soldiers have contaminated an area more than twice the size of Austria with antipersonnel mines that will kill Ukrainians indiscriminately for decades.
Mark Hiznay, Human Rights Watch; Ruth Bottomley, consultant and landmine researcher; Olesia Fesenko, The HALO Trust
Could We Fall In Love With Robots? - What does a human being need for companionship? And can that be replicated by an app, an amourous Alexa or a built-for-purpose robot?
Dr. Diana Fleischman, Dr. John Danaher, Dr. Kate Devlin
What To Do With Pandemic Flu - A two-month investigation into pandemic disease planning and prevention written within weeks of the first reports of Covid-19.
Professor Derek Smith; Ellen Fragaszy, senior research fellow, University College London Institute of Health Informatics
What Will Tomorrow's Kids Make of Robot Pets? - Exploring how and why children cherish smart toys, and how the distinction between synthetic and natural is closing.
Dr. Fangwu Tung; Mark Palatucci, co-founder and head of cloud AI & machine learning, Anki.
How to Live When Nobody Dies - Examining the science, ethics (and likelihood) of an ageless society.
Professor John Harris
What's Wrong With Eating People? - "Extolling the virtues of cannibalism." - A US blogger who did not read the article but really livened up my Twitter for a week.
Dr. Bill Schutt, Dr. Koert Van Mensvoort, Dr. John Loike
A Shortage of Legitimate Donors Is Fuelling the Black Market Organ Trade - In a free market, who's to say what a person does with their 'spare' kidney?
Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Professor Monir Moniruzzaman
Brainjacking: are medical implants the next target for hackers? - We protect phones and laptops better than pacemakers and DBS implants. For all our sakes this must change.
Dr. Laurie Pycroft
Why Some Parents Choose to Have a Deaf Baby - Is deafness a culture, or a disability? And should couples be allowed to choose it for their children?
Paul Redfern; Anna Tsekouras British Deaf Association
In the future, there will be a pill for falling in love - What would it mean to choose the people we love? Or have others choose for us?
Dr. Brian Earp
Could 3D-printed organs be medicine’s next black market? - A cheaply grown replacement organ is better than no organ at all, right?
Dr. Bertalan Mesko