A writer with no technical background recounts his incredible journey into the realm of coding and the invaluable lesson it taught him about the modern world

One day in 2017 I had a realisation that seems obvious now but had the power to shock back then: almost everything I did was being mediated by computer code. And as the trickle of code into my world became a flood, that world seemed to be getting not better but worse in approximate proportion. I began to wonder why.

Two possibilities sprang immediately to mind. One was the people who wrote the code – coders – long depicted in pop culture as a clan of vaguely comic, Tolkien-worshipping misfits. Another was the uber-capitalist system within which many worked, exemplified by the profoundly weird Silicon Valley. Were one or both using code to recast the human environment as something more amenable to them?

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A list of book choices by the Silicon Valley titans offers little more than a blank page with respect to real insights into their mindset

In August, a thoughtful blogger, Tanner Greer , posed an interesting question to the Silicon Valley crowd: “What are the contents of the ‘vague tech canon’? If we say it is 40 books, what are they?” He was using the term “canon” in the sense of “the collection of works considered representative of a period or genre”, but astutely qualifying it to stop Harold Bloom – the great literary critic who spent his life campaigning for a canon consisting of the great works of the past (Shakespeare, Proust, Dante, Montaigne et al) – spinning in his grave.

Greer’s challenge was immediately taken up by Patrick Collison, co-founder with his brother, John, of the fintech giant Stripe (market value $65bn) and thus among the richest Irishmen in history. Unusually among tech titans, Collison is a passionate advocate of reading , and so it was perhaps predictable that he would produce a list of 43 books – adding a caveat that it wasn’t “the list of books that I think one ought to read – it’s just the list that I think roughly covers the major ideas that are influential here”. (“Here” being Silicon Valley.)

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In isolation, Alexander Grothendieck seemed to have lost touch with reality, but some say his metaphysical theories could contain wonders

One day in September 2014, in a hamlet in the French Pyrenean foothills, Jean-Claude, a landscape gardener in his late 50s, was surprised to see his neighbour at the gate. He hadn’t spoken to the 86-year-old in nearly 15 years after a dispute over a climbing rose that Jean-Claude had wanted to prune. The old man lived in total seclusion, tending to his garden in the djellaba he always wore, writing by night, heeding no one. Now, the long-bearded seeker looked troubled.

“Would you do me a favour?” he asked Jean-Claude.

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The immersive theatrical experience, which sees your seat move, shake and often spray water, has seen a record summer

During this long, hot, languishing summer, I have come to believe in one thing and one thing only: seeing Twisters in 4DX. The Oklahoma-set film, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, is about a 7/10 movie in 2D – a blockbuster sequel of sorts to the 1996 disaster flick, starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as tornado chasers with modest chemistry . But in the immersive theatrical format known as 4DX, in which viewers are buffeted with literal wind and rain, Twisters becomes an unmissable 10/10 experience.

In 4DX, you feel every bump and jolt of a truck in an F5 gale, thanks to moving seats that, among other things, punch you in the back and tickle your ankles. When the characters clung to bolted theater seats during a final climactic storm, I too clung to my armrest, lest I get rattled off my wind-ripped chair. Each of the film’s tornado encounters drew loud cheers at my screening, as did the shot of Powell in a tight white T-shirt during a palpable drizzle. I emerged from Twisters with tangled hair and horizontal tear streaks; my friend lost her shoe. In 4DX, you do not just, in the words of Powell’s Tyler Owens, “ride” the storm. You are the storm.

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Pavel Durov will probably use French legal disputes to position himself as a champion of free speech, say observers

When Pavel Durov came under criticism from Russian regulators over the spread of pornography on the VKontakte social media platform he founded, the tech entrepreneur responded mockingly by changing his Twitter handle from “VK CEO” to “Porn King”.

More than a decade later, Durov’s anti-authoritarian stance and hands-off approach to moderation have landed him in more serious trouble.

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Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for society

This week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 21 March 2024.

For decades, Eliezer Yudkowsky has been trying to warn the world about the dangers of AI. And now people are finally listening to him. But is it too late?

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A sinister Alexa upgrade exerts control on family in an increasingly nonsensical attempt to capture the moment

Given how technology has become the increasingly unstoppable architect of our everyday lives – the world edging closer and closer to a Terminator prequel – it’s not hard to immediately invest in a horror film about the all-consuming threat of artificial intelligence. The film industry itself has been losing ground as AI continues to provide a cheaper and easier alternative to those pesky humans and in a year of bleak headline after bleak headline, it should theoretically be perfect timing for Blumhouse’s late August M3gan-adjacent chiller AfrAId. Yet, as one might be able to predict without the help of a digital forecast, easy targets are easily missed in a hokey and rushed jumble of half-ideas that’s as gimmicky and eye-rollingly stupid as its title. Be afraid.

In the dog days of summer, on a particularly rubbishy Labor Day weekend at the movies (other new releases include long-delayed sci-fi thriller Slingshot and a reverential biopic of Reagan), it’s at least reassuring to know that very few people will find themselves stuck with this one (it’s tracking to make between $5m and $7m). Sony, clearly scared of scaring off those precious few, decided not to provide a single press screening, aware of the critical drubbing this would receive. It’s not quite as unreleasably awful as that strategy might suggest – it’s competently, at times handsomely, shot, refreshingly dour and crucially not as awful as The Crow – but it’s too sloppily written and edited for even the least discerning of horror fans to really enjoy, a patchwork of nonsense confusingly stitched together by someone, who at one point, knew better.

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Platform failed to meet 24-hour deadline imposed by court ‘under penalty of immediate suspension’ of its activities

The social media platform X faces the prospect of a ban in Brazil after failing to meet a court-imposed 24-hour deadline to appoint a legal representative in the country.

The deadline expired at 8.07pm local time on Thursday (0.07am BST on Friday). An hour later, Elon Musk’s social network announced it would not comply.

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He may be the richest man in the world – but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him

Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth – he’s the richest person in the world – into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.

Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter. He publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, Musk helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Meanwhile, the former US president has revived his presence on the X platform.

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