Apparently, Humane’s lapel-squatting phone-replacing everything-device doesn’t “do apps”. It instead automatically chooses “AI experiences” to interpret and act on users’ commands.

I hate that they’re called “AI experiences”, because we’re inherently passive when we experience something: it happens to us. And yet we should be inherently active when we use a device. I wish these things were called “services”, because that’s what we should expect from a device that should be a tool.

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We took young Roddy to visit his mum, Maple, and sister, Scout. Maple is mostly beyond puppyish play, and honestly, Scout is too, but that didn’t stop Roddy attempting to get her to leap around the garden with him. He didn’t succeed.

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A major landmark where I live is Kelston Roundhill, a circular patch of trees at the very top of the highest hill for miles around. When driving from the west, it’s the first sight of home, even if we can’t see it from home. Anyway, me and Roddy walked up there this bright February morning. At the top, you can see Bristol sprawling to the west, Somerset blanketing the south, Bath nestled into the valley in the east.

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The fingers of my daughter’s left hand shift between positions on her violin’s fingerboard, moving with miraculous precision, stopping strings against the fretless board, fast and slow, and rocking them for vibrato. Trained over countless hours of practice and guided by her innate ability, they seem to have an unconscious life of their own.

And I watch, not quite grasping the relationship between her actions and the sound she’s making, and awed by her mastery of something far beyond anything I’ve taught her or know. 14 years from baby to near-adult; eight years from first picking up a violin. I know my daughter profoundly well in almost every other way, but she becomes someone new to me when she plays. I hardly recognise her, and it’s wondrous.

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I didn’t have a lot of time to take photos on this work trip and the sub-zero temperatures made for uncomfortable camera-handling with my dumbly gloveless hands, but Stockholm looked beautiful under frost, brief sun, and long darkness.

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