If you read one piece on early computer scientist Alan Turing that’s come out in celebration of his 100th birthday last Saturday (if you were wondering about Friday’s Google Doodle) you might do very well to make it this one in the Atlantic on how his reading of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution influenced his work and continues to shape the way we work with computers. It’s also about the limits of artificial intelligence.
Competence without comprehension
Shriver on Kids, Movies
We once wondered if Lionel Shriver is America's best writer, and she once shared with us her love for William Trevor. In an interview with The Atlantic, she talks about not having kids and says the adaptation of We Need to Talk about Kevin "is a far better film than I had any reason to expect them to be able to make."
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Six Books in Twenty Years
"Whatever the facts of her life – whether she turned out to be an ancient man living in the Icelandic interior or a woman waiting tables at a Texan diner – Ferrante writes in an autobiographical mode. That is fuel for the truthers, a sort of literary ankle-flashing. But it is also good cover for another motive: a very contemporary form of envy of another’s autonomous space and their creativity, a rage that while they give us their work, they will not also give us their person." On a new collection of Elena Ferrante's letters, interviews and short pieces.
Who Doesn’t Love The Giver?
Did you really dig Dan Kois’s profile of Lois Lowry and her classic novel, The Giver? Well, don’t miss her interview with Goodreads in that case.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hassman, Taylor, Nooteboom, Powell
New this week: Tupelo Hassman's debut Girlchild, a pair of novels -- Angel and A Game of Hide and Seek -- by Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress) from NYRB Classics featuring introductions by Hilary Mantel and Caleb Crain, Self-Portrait of an Other, prose poems by Cees Nooteboom, and Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, a new poetry collection from D.A. Powell.
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O Pioneer!
Audiobook fans take note: Our Millions original ebook The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes is now available from Audible.com.
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Faking It
Photography was fake long before Photoshop came into the picture.