Bryan Appleyard lives

While searching for something on this blog recently, I realised how often in its early days I used to link to articles by Bryan Appleyard.  (In fact, he turned up in comments once!)

I had last year searched around for more recent material from him, and found that his website had gone, and although I could see he had written another book in 2022, I thought he must not be very active anymore.

I don't know why, but I didn't look for him on Twitter, and now I see that he is there, posting infrequently, but providing links for pieces he writes in various places still, including the Spectator (which I only occasionally view now, due to the terrible quality of the Australian edition.   Yes, the UK version is still worth a look, but I just don't think to look often.)

Anyway, I see that he has some articles posted at a place I have never heard of before - Engelberg Ideas - including this recent one skeptical about Musk and his brain fiddling desires.   

In terms of books, a recent-ish one I did not know about is one he co-authored with James Lovelock shortly before he died.  From the Wiki description:

Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence is a 2019 non-fiction book by scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock. It has been published by Penguin Books/Allen Lane in the UK,^[2] and republished by the MIT Press.^[3] The book was co-authored by journalist Bryan Appleyard.^[4] It predicts that a benevolent eco-friendly artificial superintelligence will someday become the dominant lifeform on the planet and argues humanity is on the brink of a new era: the Novacene.

This sounds worth a read!

I wonder if Bryan still Googles his name and might turn up here again.

If he does, I ask that he read at least this recent post.   And calls me brilliant, or something.   :)