Tom Chatfield

“The best teachers, one hopes, don't shout at their students - because they are skilled at wooing as well as demanding the best efforts of others. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, this wooi...”

“Forget artificial intelligence - in the brave new world of big data, it's artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.”

“We are all amateur attention economists, hoarding and bartering our moments - or watching them slip away down the cracks of a thousand YouTube clips.”

“Above all, the translation of books into digital formats means the destruction of boundaries. Bound, printed texts are discrete objects: immutable, individual, lendable, cut off from the wor...”

“If computers remain far worse than us at image recognition, a certain over-confident combination of man and machine can elsewhere take inaccuracy to a whole new level.”

“The earliest known writing probably emerged in southern Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago, but for most of recorded history, reading and writing remained among the most elite human activiti...”

“From exam grading to health education to professional training to democratic participation, paths towards self-realization and success in the world are often daunting and obscure: journeys o...”

“In classrooms full of students who range from brilliant to sullen disaffection, it's games - and often games alone - that I've seen engage every single person in the room. For some, the righ...”

“The biggest neurological turn-on for people is other people. This is what really excites us. In reward terms, it's not money; it's not being given cash - that's nice - it's doing stuff with...”