The Illusion of Depth

Consider Hamlet . I'm sure you remember Hamlet. Gloomy guy. Wears black a lot. Talks to himself. Likes to hang out in cemeteries. Now, imagine for a moment that you are Hamlet. You are the Prince of Denmark (congratulations!) and heir to the throne. While you're off at University doing the "student" thing, you receive word that your beloved father (the King) is dead; murdered, it turns out, by your horrible Uncle, who then promptly marries your mother  (eww)   and usurps the throne, snatching it away from you before you even have a chance to catch the next train home. Your father's ghost (who is, you learn, burning endlessly in some harrowing Purgatory, suffering torments beyond imagining) confirms all this, and urges you to take revenge on his behalf. You're not really the right guy for this sort of thing; you're more the academic type. Revenge isn't your natural style; your first instinct would probably be to write an essay at them or something... bu...

"I tried to write poetry in College. You know what it got me? Night after night, sitting in front of that little portable typewriter, staring at the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Just staring, hours at a time. And I told myself, if I only knew the order; the right pecking order in which to hit those twenty-six keys, I could write the poem that could shame Shakespeare. But I could never quantify that ridiculous, simple, twenty-six-digit code." Kurt Vonnegut's Epicac , adapted for television by Liam O'Brien Every single idea ever expressed in English (some assembly required) "Artificial Intelligence" might not be the most frightening topic in the news these days (it's up against some pretty stiff competition after all) but it is a topic that seems to be prompting an awful lot of existential questions about the human condition at the moment.  Nestled amongst all the apocalyptic stories about mass murder, human rights abuses, political violence, enviro...