{"id":16765,"date":"2023-12-08T16:30:11","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T16:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/?p=16765"},"modified":"2024-07-31T10:52:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T10:52:43","slug":"2023-t-s-eliot-lecture-with-jeanette-winterson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/2023-t-s-eliot-lecture-with-jeanette-winterson\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 T. S. Eliot Lecture with Jeanette Winterson"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photograph of Jeanette Winterson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year Jeanette Winterson<\/strong> will deliver the annual T. S. Eliot Lecture<\/a> on 17th December at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.<\/p>\n

Journey of the<\/em> Ma<\/strong>gi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?<\/em><\/p>\n

Eliot\u2019s poem,\u00a0Journey of the Magi\u00a0<\/em>tells the story of the journey of the Wise Men to the Christ Child. Beginnings and endings are hinged in the poem. Nearly 100 years later, many of us are wondering about what is ending \u2013 and hoping it is not the world. Many of us are wondering what comes next?<\/p>\n

Homo Sapiens. Wise Men. Not so much. We are a species urgently in need of a re-set. Our next journey needs to be more ambitious than a trip to Mars.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all read the Doomsday scenarios of Terminator-style AI. But what if AI is our best bet? The chance of an evolutionary advantage that will lead us away from our biological inheritance?<\/p>\n

At present all AI is a tool. What if that changes? What if Artificial Intelligence becomes Alternative Intelligence? A new non-biological life-form invented by us and in partnership with us? Are we engineering the End of Human, or moving towards a new beginning?\u00a0 Or is that the same thing?<\/p>\n

The end is where we start from\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Presented at the Abbey Theatre since 2016 and inspired by Eliot\u2019s legacy and impact on modern literature, previous speakers include Paul Muldoon, Steven Pinker, Samantha Power, Sean Scully, Edna O\u2019Brien, Es Devlin and Sally Rooney.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s lecture,\u00a0Journey of the Ma<\/strong>gi<\/strong>,<\/em>\u00a0is named for T. S. Eliot\u2019s 1927 poem of the same name and will be delivered by\u00a0Jeanette Winterson\u00a0<\/strong>followed by an in conversation with\u00a0Mark O\u2019Connell.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jeanette Winterson\u00a0<\/strong>CBE is a British writer. After graduating from Oxford University, she published her first novel at 25.\u00a0Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit<\/em>\u00a0is based on her own upbringing but using herself as a fictional character. She scripted the novel into a BAFTA-winning BBC drama. 27 years later she re-visited that material in her internationally bestselling memoir\u00a0Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?<\/em><\/p>\n

She has written thirteen novels for adults, three collections of short stories, as well as children\u2019s books, non-fiction, and screenplays. Drawing on her years of thinking and reading about AI, Winterson published her first non-fiction book on AI,\u00a012 Bytes: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change The Way We Live and Love<\/em>, in July 2021.\u00a0Night Side of The River: Ghost Stories<\/em>\u00a0is her latest book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year Jeanette Winterson will deliver the annual T. S. Eliot Lecture on 17th December at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Journey of the Magi Were we led all that way for Birth or Death? Eliot\u2019s poem,\u00a0Journey of the Magi\u00a0tells the story of the journey of the Wise Men to the Christ Child. Beginnings and endings … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16772,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16765\/revisions\/16772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}