In which I step outside my usual track and talk about Computers and “AI” for a bit. This is, if anything, a propos of the misguided efforts to tame inflation by depressing wages, when labour productivity has grown much more rapidly than wages since the 1970s, with the result that direct labour costs are a less proportion of the cost of providing goods and services than they ever have been. Also something about a video game and what it implies for our efforts towards space settlement. Maybe next week we’ll have a Double Asteroid Redirect Test or SLS launch to talk about.
Supplementary Show
2022–09–30 Readings (with my copious commentary) from a slim volume entitled The Breeder Reactor, published by the Scottish Academic Press, reporting a meeting at the University of Strathclyde, 25 March 1977. Foreword by JS Forrest FRS (editor), Setting the Scene by Sir Samuel Curran FRS (Principal and Vice–chancellor of the University), and the first part of The Birth of the Breeder by Lord (Sir Christopher) Hinton of Bankside, OM, KBE, FRS ― in which he admits to having essentially stolen enriched uranium from the weapons program.
