Last Friday’s news was dominated by the ‘biggest IT outage in history’, as a bug in a routine software update cascaded into a global crisis. Millions of computers were knocked out, thousands of flights cancelled, hospital operations postponed, television channels went off the air, payments systems crashed, supply chains froze. In short the digital foundations … Continue reading Letter to the TLS on AI 22nd of July
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Australia’s 26 million people have spent the morning trying to get the image of Rupert Murdoch’s wedding night out of their head. “I’m trying to think of nice things like a beautiful lake with ducks floating on it but it’s... Read More ›
Robert was recently interviewed by Martin Burckhardt, the German cultural philosopher, about his new book The Machine Age in Germany. Below is a link to a video of the interview: Link: https://martinburckhardt.substack.com/p/talking-to-robert-skidelsky Below are some AI generated visualisation ideas extracted from the transcript of Robert and Martin’s conversation.
May 1 2024 William White is right (Letters, April 29) to say that John Maynard Keynes regarded the rate of interest as “highly conventional”, but he should have quoted the whole sentence from chapter 15 of The General Theory: “The difficulties in the way of [full employment] ensue from the association of a conventional and … Continue reading Letter: The reason Keynes argued for an active fiscal policy
Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, February–March 2022 20th February 2024 As the Ukrainian war approaches its second anniversary, there has been renewed, if rather limp, talk of a cease-fire followed by negotiations. The premise is that since neither side can “win,” it makes sense to start making peace. Few now remember that the war almost ended before … Continue reading The Lost Peace
My new book, The Machine Age, was published by Allen Lane on the 2nd November 2023. It’s available to buy on Amazon. Launch events were held at the Royal Society of Arts on the 6th November 2023 and UnHerd Club on the 28th November 2023. Links to the videos of each launch event are below: … Continue reading The Machine Age
Rachel Reeves needs a new economic narrative to break the fear of deficits and debt 24th November 2023 To observe the basic thinking behind Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement on 22 November, and how Rachel Reeves will respond, is to find that the Chancellor and his shadow inhabit the same mental universe. They both aim to … Continue reading Marx and Keynes can free Labour from its budget bind
They will see the promise—it is incumbent on us to alert them to the threat, or humanity will perish 14th November 2023 My new book, The Machine Age, is an ambitious—possibly overambitious—attempt to understand the human condition at this moment in time, through the prism of our relationship with machinery. The book is structured around three … Continue reading What we should tell our grandchildren about AI
Maia Kobabe on "Gender Queer," libraries, and how we have to fight back even louder.
Without reducing the global rates of deforestation, humanity probably can't prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.