Latest news with #DavidLodge
Forbes
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
We Were All Trained For AI. We Didn't Know
Star Trek memorabilia being auctioned to mark the 40th anniversay of Star Trek. Tricorder. (Photo ... More by David Lodge/FilmMagic) Everywhere you turn, someone's talking about AI. It's the centerpiece of Hard Fork and Pivot, of course—but it's also dominating more mainstream conversations. Ezra Klein can't stop dissecting its moral implications. *The Economist* is on its third AI cover this quarter. Even cocktail-party chatter, once reserved for politics and real estate, now includes debates over ChatGPT prompts. AI isn't just a tech story anymore; it's the air we're while some are scrambling to keep up, for me, this moment doesn't feel like a disruption. It feels like a reunion. I began my career just as the world was transitioning from paper to digital. The tools were clunky, and the transitions were slow. But even before I entered the workforce, I'd unknowingly been attending cultural prep classes for the world we're now stepping many in my generation, I grew up watching Star Trek. When the crew faced a crisis, they didn't pull out a manual; instead, they asked, "Computer, analyze the anomaly and recommend an approach." The idea of speaking naturally to a machine and expecting meaningful guidance was already embedded in our collective crew members left the ship, they carried tricorders—handheld analyzers that scanned environments, accessed vast databases, and offered real-time feedback. Sound familiar? The iPhone in your pocket is essentially that tricorder integrated into your life without a second ship's Doctor? A hologram an AI whose medical expertise often surpasses any human physician. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" may have become a punchline, but it reflected something profound: artificial intelligence as a trusted, high-stakes partner. The crew didn't fear the Doctor, they relied on him, worked with him, and respected what he could Here And when they needed to unwind, they turned to the holodeck—fully immersive, mixed-reality environments indistinguishable from real life. At the time, it felt like far-off science fiction. Now? Visit an Apple Store and try the Vision Pro. While it may not be ready for prime time, you'll quickly realize that we're closer to the holodeck than you here: We even had an early preview of where humanoid robotics might lead. In *The Next Generation*, Data wasn't just an android. He was a sentient, evolving being who raised questions about identity, emotion, and morality. At the time, he was fiction. Today, the line between AI and robotics is narrowing faster than most of this is to say we've figured everything out. Questions of bias, privacy, and trust still loom. Remember HAL 9000's chilling refusal in 2001: A Space Odyssey?Watch here: that's why this AI wave feels less like a leap into the unknown and more like the next step in a story we've been rehearsing for decades. We've seen these interfaces before. We've practiced these behaviors with Alexa, Siri, and now GPT, Claude, and whatever comes next. For brand builders and business leaders, the insight is simple: AI doesn't need to feel robotic or unfamiliar. The winning brands won't be the ones that make AI the headline. They'll be the ones that make it seamless, human, and emotionally aligned with what consumers already expect technology to isn't the dawn of something foreign; it's the next chapter in a story we've been telling ourselves for a long time. We're not navigating a strange new world. We're returning to one we've quietly been preparing for. And now, we're all ready to be beamed up into the coming AI world.
Spectator
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Beware taking up running in your fifties
Over a hotel breakfast in Brisbane, I showed Sir Alan Hollinghurst my injuries. We'd met the previous week at the Auckland Writers' Festival and would meet again, post-Brisbane, at the Sydney Writers' Festival. A book tour of Australia and New Zealand is a bit like being in a David Lodge novel – writers are more likely to travel halfway round the world if a few potentially sizeable crowds are waiting for them. A.C. Grayling, who I broke bread with in Auckland and saw again in Sydney, seemed to have scored the most palpable hit by being invited to be philosopher-in-residence at a festival in Margaret River, centre of Australia's most prestigious wine region. It was déjà-vu as I kept bumping into Lemn Sissay, Samantha Harvey, Philippe Sands and Colm Tóibín, Colm reminding me that I'd once advised him to improve his sales by adding the occasional murder. Back to those injuries. I took up 'running' in my fifties. I put the word in inverted commas because the most I can usually manage is 5k at a pace somewhere below a slow trot. But I've grown to enjoy it, and whenever I go somewhere new I like to go for a run to get a feel for the place. Having flown from Auckland to Brisbane, I duly set out before breakfast, only to be undone by a particularly vicious stretch of uneven pavement. Back at the hotel, my wife dressed my wounds so we could enjoy breakfast before seeing a doctor. Nothing needed stitching, but I was sporting so many plasters and bandages that I felt mummified. The doctor seemed most concerned about my elbow: 'But I can't quite see bone,' she concluded cheerily. Sharing the story afterwards, I learned that people my age (65) don't actually fall. Rather we 'have a fall'. This is the stage of my life I have reached. The trip (hah!) had begun with a long flight (Edinburgh-Doha) followed by an even longer one (Doha-Auckland). We found ourselves exiting the international terminal in New Zealand at around 3.30 a.m., only to find that the domestic terminal (we were heading to South Island) didn't open for another 90 minutes. Joy. But things improved once we'd reached Nelson and rented a car. We headed for the wineries of Marlborough, where our first cellar-door tasting was hosted by a chap from Wales. So obviously we talked about the Welsh-speaking community of Gaiman in Patagonia – something I knew nothing about prior to visiting the place during a South American cruise a couple of months earlier. My wife Miranda has a knack for booking holidays. The cruise lasted over 50 days, during which time we circumnavigated South America. Once home, we just had time to do the laundry before we were off to Lisbon for my birthday – the day itself coinciding with a power cut that blacked out the whole of Portugal. Having survived that, we were ready to repack for the Antipodes. Which would be fine, except that a while back I signed up to write a new novel. I did the plotting and planning during the cruise's many sea days, but there hasn't been much time since then to actually write the story. I lugged all my notes and as much of the first draft as exists to New Zealand, but never felt the need to remove any of it from my bag: there always seemed to be another wine region, art gallery or bookshop to visit. It was especially interesting to see the changes in Christchurch since my last visit in 2017. The shipping containers – turned into everything from shops to wine bars after the 2011 earthquake – have all gone. A few buildings remain to be demolished and progress on the cathedral has come to a halt due to lack of money, but the city itself was buzzing and the 'cardboard' cathedral (built as a temporary replacement) is as glorious as I remembered it. After the Sydney Writers' Festival we tacked on a bit more holiday, which involved the wineries around Adelaide and then three days on the Ghan, a well-appointed train that chugs its way north to Alice Springs and Darwin. This, I thought, was when I'd get down to doing some actual work – but the scenery rolled past, hypnotic in its intense, ever-changing sameness, and I became fascinated by the parade of termite hills. The book stayed where it was. Novels need to be credible while the real world does not. In a doctor's waiting room in Sydney, where my injuries were to be reassessed and the dressings changed, a man walked in with his elderly mother and sat down opposite. 'Ian?' he said. This was Andrew, who used to be my publicist back in the day, and is just about the only person I know in the city. His mother had had a fall…
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Yahoo
PPD: Persons of interest in missing person investigation located
PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — Investigators with the Portsmouth Police Department have located two persons of interest for an ongoing missing person investigation. Ryan Ashley Loper, 34, and Richard Gary Aden, 50, were wanted for questioning regarding the missing person case for David Lodge, who was involved in a hit-and-run. Portsmouth Police seek suspect in hit-and-run incident Investigators with the Portsmouth Police Department's Major Crime Unit interviewed both Aden and Loper. While Aden is no longer a person of interest, Loper remains one. If you have any information about this case, you can submit an anonymous tip by calling 1-888-LOCK-U-UP, downloading the P3 tips app to a mobile device, or visiting and submitting a tip. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
11-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on campus cuts: academics pay a high price for Westminster's mistakes
In one of David Lodge's famous campus novels, a young English literature lecturer pictures her university as 'the ideal human community, where … people were free to pursue excellence and self‑fulfilment, each according to their own rhythm and inclination'. A non-academic friend comments wryly: 'Well, it's nice work if you can get it.' Nice Work was written in 1988, in part as a fictional response to the Thatcher cuts to higher education at the time. It's safe to say a contemporary equivalent would need a different title. Forty years on, universities like to sell themselves along the lines of Robyn Penrose's romantic vision. But the marketised reality for modern university staff, particularly those at the sharp end of a deepening funding crisis, is another world altogether. As the Guardian reported this month, almost a quarter of universities – including prestigious Russell Group institutions such as Durham and Cardiff – are taking a scythe to budgets and planning to shed staff. The Office for Students (OFS), the university regulator established in 2017, has predicted that 72% of higher education providers in England could be in the red by 2025-26. Up to 10,000 redundancies or job losses are in prospect. The Royal College of Nursing has warned that nursing courses are being 'engulfed' by the cuts, even as the care sector seeks to fill 40,000 vacancies. Arts and humanities subjects are also in the line of fire. Airily, the OFS is calling for more of the same, recommending 'bold and transformative action … while continuing to deliver for the students of today and tomorrow'. Easy to say, extremely hard to do. But what about the poor bloody infantry? Demoralised university staff, whose pay has been declining steeply in real terms, are not responsible for the dysfunctional marketisation of higher education, which is at the root of today's financial black hole. Successive Conservative governments are, having failed to foresee how treacherous the politics of raising tuition fees would be. Nor did academics have anything to do with the decision to impose visa restrictions on high-fee‑paying foreign students, which has compounded the problem. Yet it is they who must bear the brunt of Westminster's cumulative mistakes, in the form of acute job insecurity, insufficient resources, pressures from panicked managers and increasingly untenable workloads. As one vice-chancellor rightly told the Guardian, this unfolding crisis is largely passing under the radar. The drip-drip nature of the bad news being delivered on campuses up and down the country is relentless but dispersed. That does not make it any less stressful for those attempting to fill gaps in teaching left by departed colleagues, or for a thirtysomething humanities lecturer wondering whether, after years of impoverished study, their job will even see them into middle age. At present, Labour is doing little to help. In November, Bridget Phillipson announced that the annual tuition fees cap would go up in line with inflation from April, the first rise for eight years. A £285 rise to £9,535 will modestly increase the debts of individual students, while doing little to address the overall problem. A new settlement is desperately needed – one that properly restores a sector that delivers a public good to the public realm. And which enables a sense of professional vocation, for those who work within it, to be renewed.
