Me on Schwartz Media's The Weekend Read, reading my article on ChatGPT, published in the April edition of The Monthly
Machine Learning
How the sausage is made: A review Frank Bongiorno’s Dreamers and Schemers
Towards the end of Dreamers and Schemers, his ‘political history of Australia’, Frank Bongiorno tells us that the term ‘democracy sausage’ first entered public discourse in 2012. The date, he suggests, is significant, for while the coinage seemed on one level to speak to the relaxedness and egalitarianism of the Australian electorate, and even to a sense of celebration and fun as regards the institutions of democracy, its introduction coincided with a sharp decline in public trust in politicians and the political process.
How to secede without really trying: A review of How to Rule Your Own Country
In How to Rule Your Own Country, Harry Hobbs and George Williams consider the phenomenon of micronations, which is to say territorial entities whose members claim independence or sovereignty but which lack diplomatic recognition.
Brave New Wild: Why ‘Resurrecting’ the Thylacine is a Dangerous Idea
In 2021 the National Film and Sound Archive released new footage of the last known thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.
Zero Gravity: Floating Towards Posthumanism
‘They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence’, rasps Kyle Reese in The Terminator, referring to the Skynet computer system that launched a nuclear attack against humanity in the catastrophe known as Judgment Day. The trope is as old as science fiction itself, and shadows the genre with all of the tenacity of an Uzi-toting T-800.
Review of Who’s Black and Why?
In 1741, the exalted members of the Bordeaux Royal Academy of Sciences met to consider sixteen essays written in response to the following question: ‘What is the physical cause of the Negro’s color, the quality of [the Negro’s] hair, and the degeneration of both [Negro hair and skin]?’
Suture Shock: Humanity goes under the knife
As we become ever more remote from ‘meatspace’, it’s worth considering the role the scalpel and the needle may play in that development.
Not the debate we need: On mitochondrial donation
If a society consisted of human beings who had been partly engineered or edited, would we think about human life in the same way or would we lose a sense of reciprocity with others?
Review of Harlem Nights, by Deidre O’Connell
‘As sure as guns is guns, if we let in coloured labour, they’ll swallow us. They hate us. All the other colours hate the white. And they’re only waiting till we haven’t got the pull over them. They’re only waiting. And then what about poor little Australia?’
It’s the stupidity, stupid! On technocratic populism
Even as it grows more menacing in point of imagery and political polemic, the Australian iteration of the anti-lockdown/anti-vaccination movement (if indeed it is a movement) still has the air of cosplay about it.