Back at the turn of the century I was intrigued by the flurry of predictions regarding the progress of artificial intelligence most popularly identified with Ray Kurzweil. Of course, all of this looked wildly off the mark a decade on, and I declared AI a bust — thinking in particular…

When looking over Black Panther 2’s box office numbers back in the autumn I argued that there was a case for regarding the film as a commercial failure — as it had made, in inflation-adjusted terms, only half what its predecessor had, while given its big budget (reported as $250…

Last year Ted Gioia penned an interesting piece about the declining proportion of music sales for which newly created music accounts. In considering the matter I am not so sure that, as he tells us, this is no reflection of the quality of that music. (I defer to the scientific…

When Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out on President’s Day it looked like a hit, with its $106 million take in the first three days and the $120 million it picked up over the four-day weekend at the North American box office — a feat that seemed the more…

The numbers are in for Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ opening weekend — and as it happens the film’s box office gross is below even the subdued earlier expectations. The movie has taken in a mere $30.5 …

These days to mention Planet of the Apes is generally to evoke film — with, I suppose, the listener’s generation determining the version of which they think. The young, I suppose, may be most likely to think of the currently ongoing franchise (headed into its fourth installment with The Kingdom…

Earlier this week journalist Ezra Klein penned an opinion piece on artificial intelligence (AI) in the New York Times. What the piece offers the reader was predictable enough — a hazy sense that “Big Things” are happening, bolstered by an example or two (DeepMind “building a system” that “predict[ed] the…

Over the years I have remarked again and again the reports that writers’ wages — and certainly the wages of writers of fiction — have long been collapsing. The result is that, while the chances to “make a living” writing fiction (or anything else) have always been few, the path…

Recently checking on the myth of STEM worker shortages I looked at what areas the American system of higher education is awarding degrees in — and found that the past decade has seen an absolute and relative surge in the degrees awarded in STEM fields, with this going not just…