Daniel Susskind
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People who write good books, songs and stuff
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Son of perma-doomprophet for the legal industry, Professor Richard Susskind.
If the foreword to his book A World Without Work is anything to go by, Susskind Jr has spent most of his, as yet, short adult life advising politicians, listening to academics, and then being one, so it should not come as a surprise that his expostulations on the future of the world — that machines will take over and we’re all going to be sharecropped for battery acid — is impressive in its theoretical gusto, owes more than a bit to Blade Runner, but is a touch short of a sense of the basic messy intractability of real life. It looks awesome as a model, in other words.
Doubtless this all makes his dad — very much of the same intellectual stripe — proud: it is an interesting validation for the theory that ideas involve by infecting host minds and regenerating through some kind of Lamarckian evolution, for there seem to be only two people on the planet prepared to make such strident arguments to this effect — okay, three, if you count legal technology futurologist Jamie Susskind who, by another remarkable coincidence spent his childhood being dandled on the very same knee as Daniel — and, if that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they happen to be father and sons, would be quite the improbable coincidence.
Wonder what mum made of it all, though. “Sod this for a laugh, I’m going to watch Coronation Street”, is my best guess.