Synthetic humans

Review: Channel 4 TV series, Humans

As the summer holidays get underway, I catch myself thinking wouldn't it be nice to have a synth in the house? In case you are not among the four million people hooked to Channel 4's latest Sunday-night drama, Humans, a synth is an aesthetically pleasing but slightly eery robot in human form that performs mundane and thankless tasks. I am looking for one to glide about the house making meals, tidying up after the kids and loading the washing machine. What's wrong with that? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.

The actor Gemma Chan who plays the synth Anita
Credit: Des Willie for Kudos

Set in a parallel present, Humans is part sci-fi thriller and part family drama with a clever script that constantly questions what it is to be human. This is 'theory of the mind' with a dash of adrenalin. While most synths are merely robots - albeit capable of inspiring affection in their human users - there is a small and secretive band of super-synths who have been modified: they have become conscious. In other words, they are capable of feeling and thinking like a human, while also operating as a complex machine. The boundaries between artificial and human intelligence are well and truly blurred.

On the margins of the mobile world

What kind of idiot drops their mobile phone down the loo? That's what I thought to myself a few months ago when my brother lost his iPhone to a watery grave. Now it seems I too have become an idiot. And yes, it fell out of my back pocket.

Since that unfortunate incident, I have been through four  stages of phone bereavement: 

• initial optimism that the phone would survive its immersion in toilet water (it didn't)
• panic that no one would be able to contact me
• twinges of envy mixed with nostalgia every time I heard someone else's phone ping
• and finally acceptance.

Teenagers: too exposed to the dangers of mobiles?
© Ctvvelve | Dreamstime.com 

I have been forced to order a new phone but as I wait for it to arrive, I am enjoying an odd sense of peace. During a spare moment - waiting to pick up the children for instance - I no longer reach into my handbag to check my emails. Instead, I just sit/stand and quietly watch the world go by.