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The Wonderer’s Watchlist


When will we reach the singularity? What will the future look like? What's the universe made of? Sometimes client work takes us to some mind-bending places. Here are some of the gems we've stumbled across in our research...

By: Phyllida Bluemel,   1 minute

1. Ethical quandaries in the age of big data, Justin Grace
The freelance data scientist, who has worked in academia, technology, healthcare and most recently digital media with the Guardian, discusses the complexities of data use and misuse.

 

How can consciousness arise within the laws of Physics?

With great opportunity comes great responsibility. The legendary mathematician Sir Roger Penrose examines what quantum computing might have to do with being human.

 

Ingenious minds: George Widener

Outsider artist George Widener, a high functioning calendar savant, can manipulate dates and numbers in incomprehensible ways. Channelling his talents into detailed, complex art intended for a future AI audience, this short doc showcases a remarkable brain and the beauty of numbers.

 

Grace Hopper MIT Lecture

“Everything turned out to be a system…we’re looking at a raw material called data.” This 1985 lecture from the inimitable Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is full of insight and peppered with anecdotes. The woman who invented the first operational compiled computer language is as funny, clever, and prescient as you’d expect.

 

Upgrading the particle physics toolkit: the future Circular Collider

We found the Higgs Boson. Where next? What are the kinds of questions we should be asking? John Womersley and Harry Cliff tell us, outlining plans for a large Hadron collider replacement that’ll tool up physicists taking on the deepest questions about the universe.

 

Why do ambitious women have flat heads?

Software pioneer Dame Stephanie Shirley humorously charts the opportunities she grasped as a woman in tech in the 1960s – a catalogue of life lessons.

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