Category: Books
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‘We are beyond crisis; we are in a state of distress’
It’s exactly a year since I finally left teaching. It’s coming up for two years since my debut novel – MIDDLE CLASS – was published (get a copy here). And it’s no surprise to see the headlines about the mental health crisis in schools. This is where the novel takes you: inside a London school,…
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Somerset House launch
Thanks to everyone who came out to Somerset House for the launch event there last Tuesday! Really fantastic evening, with lovely friends from my writing group there, plus loads of people from around the creative arts at Somerset House and my work at the Institute for the Future of Work. Roped my two into doing…
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Oppenheimer, John Donne, and the atomic origins of AI
You will probably have seen the news that #Oppenheimer, the film directed by Christopher Nolan, has won a bunch of Oscars. What you might not know is that the story it tells – of the birth of the atomic bomb – has two lesser-known dimensions. The first concerns the name given to the first test…
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‘God-Like’ – Chapter 1 excerpt
I’m really looking forward to getting this out in a few weeks! It’s been a wild ride to write because, as you’ll know, AI right now is such a shape-shifting, slippery beast. The upshot of that is that this book can only ever be a snapshot… but this is why I’ve been super keen to…
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After Getting High: Getting Down
As many of you will already know, I’m just beginning writing again. Through five works of non-fiction I’ve been wanting to follow my heart over to the other side, and I’m really thrilled that I’m going to have the chance to work on a novel this coming academic year. This has been made possible through…
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In Which Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook is the New Church, and We Are All Its Priests
In a recent speech, Mark Zuckerberg has declared that Facebook is the new Church, and its users should all be like Priests. “Communities give us that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are not alone, that we have something better ahead to work for,” he noted, before adding that…