For once the comments are quickly and pointedly onto this shallow techno-ebulliance that is so prevalent in techno-journalism. What is apparently lost on the writer is Lodge’s in-joke reference to a character from his own Thinks . . . – Ralph Messenger (supposedly based upon Dennett), director of the Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester (a fictional “new” university). Helen, a novelist and writer in residence at the university, is his seducee.
In it, Ralph, a married, groundbreaking cognitive scientist, meets Helen, a recently bereaved novelist, and “sparks fly” (presumably not from the robot short-circuiting).
What the rationale behind reworking of Thinks . . . is not known to me. If I may invoke Ralph’s dictum “We can never know for certain what another person is thinking.” The play is entitled “Secret Thoughts”.
manwithoutqualities 