Technology

This column nearly didn’t happen. Just as I sat down to write, disaster! My dishwasher lost its connection to the internet. This meant I could no longer view real-time feedback about its water consumption on the app. Nor could I start my dishwasher remotely from my office, timing it perfectly so it would be ending the drying cycle when I got home. This facility is, of course, almost entirely pointless. I use it all the time. Thus I was nearly resigned to cancelling this column in order to spend the next six hours fixing the problem. Fortunately, resetting the router fixed the glitch straight away, which is why you are

A friend of mine got a nasty shock last week after a Google Meet call, thanks to a new AI function that he was unaware of. On this occasion, the consequences were quite funny, but on another day his failure to get his head around this new technology could have ended his career. Had the AI continued to transcribe the call after the other two had left – and sent it to them? We’re all familiar with the poor sod who hits ‘reply all’ when responding to an email and accidentally copies in precisely the person whom he doesn’t want to read it. I’ve done it myself. I’ve also heard

‘We don’t have an appointment for you!’ yelled the woman sitting behind the reception hatch. My 87-year-old father stared back at her. He had made this appointment at his local GP surgery in the Midlands and I had flown from Ireland to be with him and my mother when they attended it. We had the right day and time and he had the confirmation text to prove it. But the receptionist couldn’t find it on her system. ‘You need to move!’ she shouted at my father. ‘I’ve come a long way…’ I tried, to which she shouted back ‘Who are you!’ and didn’t wait for the answer. It wasn’t a

I’ve always loved cinema, but hardly ever cinemas. It’s no surprise to me that movie-going audiences are in decline. Ticket sales this year are only $4.8 billion, down from $6 billion in 2023. Apparently 65 per cent of Americans now prefer to watch a movie at home, compared with 35 per cent who say they prefer to watch it in a theatre. This is probably due to improved home cinema technology and the ever-shortening gap between when a movie is released in cinemas and is available at home. The chain of Curzon cinemas sold this month for a measly £3.9 million. I can’t say that I find this trend upsetting.

‘Et remarquant que cette vérité, je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus extravagantes suppositions des Sceptiques n’étaient pas capables de l’ébranler, je jugeai que je pouvais la recevoir sans scrupule pour le premier principe de la Philosophie que je cherchais.’ Pardon my French – and I translate below. But so elemental was what René Descartes wrote (afterwards rendered in Latin ‘Cogito ergo sum’) that his phrasing should confront us first in his own language. Though in 1637 Descartes will have known nothing of robots, still less of artificial intelligence, he settled by this remark a debate that we think remains open, and

Provence One of my daughters and a few pals, thinking I need company, have been urging me to get Bumble, the online dating app where women make the first move. I’ve thought in the past month or so that I might like some sort of relationship, but contemplating the reality is scary. When someone you love passionately dies, love lives on but sometimes too much; both sweet and painful memories can be paralysing. ‘You can’t be on your own in the cave for ever,’ someone said recently.  Why not? Friends Dave and Kate met on Bumble. He said: ‘You must remember, Catriona, there are lots of decent men out there