Let's keep this brief. So many of the arguments (still) raging across social media about the Brexit vote - repent, Leave voters, blah, blah, et cetera - consist of forward-looking statements combined with attacks on the other side for not being able to say confidently what the future will hold. In the UK. Of all places. Yesterday, we had heavy rain. Today, bright sunshine. Tomorrow? Maybe George Osborne, who forecast that a vote to leave would plunge us into a "year-long recession" (and yes, you're right, the vote was just over a year ago now) should take over the weather forecast.
Recent survey evidence* suggests that regular users of the term "Maybot" to denigrate the UK prime minister (as in: she's robotic, etc.) often turn out also to be enthusiastic advocates of AI. Another recent survey** indicates that the most committed crystal-ball gazers of the undead Remain campaign invariably insist that their forward-looking assertions are somehow fact-based and rational.
Not that another layer of government above the Westminster government, with all its attendant bureaucracy and costs, is necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps Brussels would have reacted more effectively to that recent tragic fire than Westminster or indeed Kensington & Chelsea. Nor does it really matter that Facebook is heaving with dissent over last year's headline vote. Brexit has become the opium of the people.
But if the hour brings forth the man - a phrase worth putting into a search engine if you have half an hour to spare - then maybe the man we need right now is not Michel Barnier, nor indeed Jean-Claude Juncker, but once again William Goldman, who wrote the book Adventures in the Screen Trade, and within that, the sentence, "Nobody knows anything."
* Sample: various friends, in conversation. Post-truth, right, so it's okay to call that a survey?
**Sample: various recent heavily commented Facebook shares. Truthiness abounds.
Recent survey evidence* suggests that regular users of the term "Maybot" to denigrate the UK prime minister (as in: she's robotic, etc.) often turn out also to be enthusiastic advocates of AI. Another recent survey** indicates that the most committed crystal-ball gazers of the undead Remain campaign invariably insist that their forward-looking assertions are somehow fact-based and rational.
Not that another layer of government above the Westminster government, with all its attendant bureaucracy and costs, is necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps Brussels would have reacted more effectively to that recent tragic fire than Westminster or indeed Kensington & Chelsea. Nor does it really matter that Facebook is heaving with dissent over last year's headline vote. Brexit has become the opium of the people.
But if the hour brings forth the man - a phrase worth putting into a search engine if you have half an hour to spare - then maybe the man we need right now is not Michel Barnier, nor indeed Jean-Claude Juncker, but once again William Goldman, who wrote the book Adventures in the Screen Trade, and within that, the sentence, "Nobody knows anything."
* Sample: various friends, in conversation. Post-truth, right, so it's okay to call that a survey?
**Sample: various recent heavily commented Facebook shares. Truthiness abounds.
Look into my ear?