What is Intelligence? A FESTIVAL OF IDEAS TUESDAY 18TH - FRIDAY 21ST OCTOBER 2016 1
OVERVIEW OF SCHEDULE AND EXPECTED ATTENDANCE Parents and members of the community are very welcome to all events. Each event is allocated to a particular group: students are very welcome to all events, but timetabled lessons must not be missed in order to attend. Out of timetable events are open to all without restriction.
TUESDAY 18 OCTOBER 11.50am-1.05pm - Layard Theatre Professor Rose Luckin - Intelligence, Artificial and Human: do we have it? All Upper Sixth, Computer Science Upper and Lower Sixth. 4.30pm-5.30pm - Layard Theatre Professor Rose Luckin - How do we make Technology for teaching and learning work now and in the future? Open to all pupils and staff 5.45pm-6.30pm Jane Duran - The Imaginative Intelligence - A Poetry Reading Upper and Lower Sixth English, Modern Languages 7.30pm - 8.30pm – Music School Bela Hartmann - The Diabelli Variations - Beethoven’s Musical Intelligence All academic and music scholars. All A Level and GCSE Musicians.
WEDNESDAY 19 OCTOBER 11.50am-1.05pm - Layard Theatre Professor Philip Hoare - The Whale Within Us All Fifths and Lower Sixth 5.30pm-6.30pm - Layard Theatre Ian Yorston - The Unreasonable Man Speaks about the Future Upper and Lower Sixth - Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, DT, Maths (musicians must attend rehearsals that take place during this talk) 8.00pm-9.00pm - Layard Theatre Stewart Dakers - All the Q`s - A, E, I and A Upper and Lower Sixth - RS, English, History, Geography, Economics, Business Studies, Art, Drama, Modern Languages
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THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER 11.50pm-1.05pm - Layard Theatre Major-General Peter Williams - Battling for Intelligence: Military Spying in Cold War East Germany All Shells and Fourths 5.30pm-6.30pm - Layard Theatre Sid Odedra - Artificial Intelligence: Ghost in the Machine All Sixth Form 7.30pm-9.30pm - Layard Theatre Film - Ex Machina Fifth Form and above (voluntary) - Layard Theatre
FRIDAY 21 OCTOBER 11.50am-1.05pm - Layard Theatre Julian Baggini - What is Intelligence? All Sixth Form 1.50pm-3.05pm - Assembly Hall Alex Bellos - Maths, Monkeys and Machines Whole School
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WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE? Google’s Director of Engineering,Ray Kurzweil, popularised the ‘singularity’ concept, when he described the moment when he believes artificial intelligence will overtake human thinking. He envisages this happening in about 15 years’ time. At last year’s Order and Chaos Festival , the writer Bonnie Greer told the audience at Canford that, if we are to continue to thrive in the world, we need to be smarter than the machines. For some this may seem to come from the world of sci-fi but, whether these people are right or not, humanity does face an unprecedented challenge to its understanding of what we mean by intelligence and its co-mate consciousness. While we are considering whether a machine might develop that fickle quality of self-awareness, scientists and philosophers are questioning more and more our arrogance in believing that we are the only only truly sentient beings in the universe. So these reflections led me to choose the title What is Intelligence? for this year’s Canford Festival of Ideas. Whether we are scientists or artists, cynics or believers, computer savvy or still located somewhere in the dark ages of technology, we need to consider what it means to be alive in the world at this particular moment in its history. And if we want to thrive we need to equip ourselves with emotional and imaginative intelligence as well as rigorous logic.
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So come and listen to as many of these speakers as you can and ask them probing questions. Events are open to all members of the Canford Community. Simply turn up at the right time: no need for tickets or prior notice. Certain events are compulsory for groups of students but I hope lots of Canfordians will come to as many as they can manage. Over the three nights of the festival teachers have been asked to reduce prep for all of those attending events, compulsory or voluntary. John James, Festival Director
TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER
Rose Luckin Intelligence, Ar tificial and Human: do we have it? 11.50AM-1.05PM, LAYARD THEATRE ALL UPPER SIXTH, COMPUTER SCIENCE UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH
How do we make technology for teaching and learning work now, and in the future? 4.30PM-5.30PM, LAYARD THEATRE ALL PUPILS AND STAFF
Prof Rose Luckin PhD is Professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab.
Rose’s research involves the design of adaptive educational technology using theories from psychology and techniques from artificial intelligence. She works closely with educators across the sector and with the Education Technology industry, in particular Start-ups and SMEs, to enable them to integrate research evidence and methods into their products. Rose set up and chaired the Research Advisory Group for the Government Educational Technology nondepartmental public body: Becta, and has advised research councils in various countries on the design and use of educational technologies. She is a member of the EPSRC peer review college and is also a regular reviewer for RCUK more generally. Rose has written widely about Educational Technology, the Learning Sciences and Artificial Intelligence as applied to education. Her book: Re-Designing Learning Contexts, published by Routledge explores how well-designed and used technologies can contextualise learning for each individual. She is lead author of Nesta’s influential ‘Decoding Learning’ report published in 2012 and Pearson’s Unleashing Intelligence paper, published in 2016. Rose has taught in the school, further education and university sectors. She is a Governor and Trustee at St Paul’s public day school in London, where she chairs the education committee, and a Governor of the Self Managed Learning College in Brighton. She has previously served on the governing bodies of state primary and secondary schools. Prior to taking up her post at the Knowledge Lab in 2006, Rose was Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sussex. Rose is also a Trustee of the Ufi charitable trust, whose aim is to help improve vocational skills in the UK’s workforce by funding digital solutions for vocational learning.
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TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER The Imaginative Intelligence Jane Duran 5.45PM-6.30PM, SIXTH FORM CENTRE UPPER SIXTH AND LOWER SIXTH ENGLISH, MODERN LANGUAGES A poetry reading by writer-in-residence, Jane Duran Jane Duran was born in Cuba to a Spanish father and American mother, and brought up in the United States and in Chile. She is the author of the poetry collections Breathe Now, Breathe, which won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, Coastal, Graceline, and Silences from the Spanish Civil War, the latter two having received PBS Recommendations. More recent work includes American Sampler and Gypsy Ballads, the latter translations of Federico Garcia Lorca with Gloria Garcia Lorca. (Please see page 17 for more information about Jane Duran).
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TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER Diabelli Variations Music for the Mind Béla Hartmann, Piano 7.30PM-8.30PM, MUSIC SCHOOL Tickets for this event are £14 or £10 You can book on www.canfordmusic.ticketsource.co.uk THIS CONCERT IS FREE FOR ALL PUPILS ALL ACADEMIC AND MUSIC SCHOLARS, A LEVEL AND GCSE MUSICIANS, PIANO STUDENTS A prize-winner of both national and international competitions, the Czech-German pianist Béla Hartmann has established a reputation for lively and individual interpretations of a wide repertoire, ranging from Rameau to Luciano Berio. Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven form the core of this extensive range, and he was both prize-winner in the International Schubert Competition, Dortmund (1997), and winner of the Beethoven Medal of the Beethoven Society of Europe (1995). In 2000, he was a semi-finalist at the Leeds International Piano Competition. In 2005 Béla Hartmann performed the complete piano sonatas and dances by Schubert at Steinway Hall, London. Other programmes include the complete first book of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, works by Dvorak and Smetana and contemporary composers such as Birtwhistle, Berio and Peter Eben. He has given recitals at prestigious venues in London, across the UK and in Europe, as well as in the USA, where he appeared at the Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. He has performed concertos by Brahms, Prokoviev, Dvorak, Beethoven and Mozart. Béla Hartmann is also a keen musical essayist and has published in print and online on areas such as performance practice and artistic identity. The 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120, commonly known as the Diabelli Variations, is a set of variations for the piano written between 1819 and 1823 by Ludwig van Beethoven on a waltz composed by Anton Diabelli. It is often considered to be one of the greatest sets of variations for keyboard along with J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The music writer Donald Tovey called it “the greatest set of variations ever written”. The pianist Alfred Brendel has described it as “the greatest of all piano works”. It also comprises, in the words of Hans von Bülow, “a microcosm of Beethoven’s art”. In Beethoven: The Last Decade 1817–1827, Martin Cooper writes, “The variety of treatment is almost without parallel, so that the work represents a book of advanced studies in Beethoven’s manner of expression and his use of the keyboard, as well as a monumental work in its own right”. In his Structural Functions of Harmony, Arnold Schoenberg writes that the Diabelli Variations “in respect of its harmony, deserves to be called the most adventurous work by Beethoven”.
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WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER The Whale within Us Philip Hoare 11.50AM-1.05PM, LAYARD THEATRE ALL FIFTH FORM AND LOWER SIXTH
Do recent developments in the way we see animals such as cetaceans, primates, and corvids change the way we see ourselves? Focusing in particular on the whale, Philip Hoare will discuss the troubled meeting of human and natural history and what it says about our past, present and future.
Philip Hoare (born 1958, Southampton) is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. His latest book, The Sea Inside, is published by 4th Estate, UK, Melville House, US, & Atico de los Libros, Spain. An experienced broadcaster and curator, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011. He is also co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the Moby-Dick Big Read, www.mobydickbigread.com www.philiphoare.co.uk @philipwhale
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WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER The Unreasonable Man speaks about the Future Ian Yorston 5.30PM-6.30PM, LAYARD THEATRE PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY, COMPUTER SCIENCE, MATHS (UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH). MUSICIANS MUST ATTEND REHEARSALS THAT TAKE PLACE DURING THIS TALK.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." George Bernard Shaw
Ian Yorston is Director of Digital Strategy at Radley College in the United Kingdom. He has previously been Head of Science, Head of Physics and Head of Careers. The fact that Radley keeps giving him new jobs suggests that perhaps he's not very good at any of them. Beyond Radley, he acts as an advisor to the Independent Schools Council, is a Governor of a Catholic day school and has spent many a happy week masquerading as an ISI Schools' Inspector. Prior to Radley he spent 10 years in the Royal Air Force including 3 years as an Electronic Warfare Officer. This involved a lot of computers and a number of wars. He also spent a great deal of time working alongside Americans. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If he did have a youth then it was a long time ago. He spent some of it reading Economics and Engineering Science at Oxford University. He tweets far too much at @IanYorston; His WebLog - The UnreasonableMan - is at www.unreasonableman.net
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WEDNESDAY 19TH OCTOBER All the Q’s – A, E, I, and AI Stewart Dakers 8.00PM-9.00PM, LAYARD THEATRE GEOGRAPHY, ENGLISH, HISTORY, ECONOMICS, RS, BUSINESS STUDIES, ART, DRAMA (UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH) Stewart Dakers is a 77-year-old community voluntary worker. His column, Grey Matters, appears in The Guardian. He spent ten years stopping strikes at Ford and London Airport, twenty years working in nature conservation as an estate worker and ranger in Somerset and Surrey, twenty years as a househusband, during which time he did part time work as a street youth worker, outreach worker for ex-offenders, working with adults with learning disabilities and freelance journalism. All that time he painted in his free time and continues to do now. www.theguardian.com/profile/stewartdakers www.stewartdakers.co.uk
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THURSDAY 20TH OCTOBER Battling for Intelligence: Militar y Spying in Cold War East Germany Major General Peter Williams 11.50AM-1.05PM, LAYARD THEATRE SHELLS AND FOURTHS After studying History at Cambridge University, Peter Williams spent over 30 years in the Coldstream Guards and enjoyed an unusually varied career. As an Infantryman he carried out ceremonial duties in London, spent two years with Baluchi soldiers in the mountains of Oman, served twice in Northern Ireland and commanded 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards in Germany, East Tyrone (Mentioned in Despatches) and Bosnia. In the early 1990s he wrote speeches for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. During the Cold War he specialised in intelligence, serving first in Berlin from 1973 to 1975 as a Regimental Intelligence Officer. He then studied Russian and German before spending more than four years in the 1980s in Berlin and East Germany as a Liaison and Operations officer in the British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (known as BRIXMIS), in effect working as a military spy. In 1983 he was awarded an MBE for his intelligence work. From 1993 to 1994 he commanded the Coldstream Guards armoured infantry battalion group in central Bosnia on UN peacekeeping operations during the civil war there, for which he received an OBE. In the late 1990s he then went on to do two more 6-month tours in the former Yugoslavia, first as the Deputy Chief UN Military Observer and then in Sarajevo as the Chief Faction Liaison Officer in NATO’s HQ SFOR, liaising with the Bosnian Serb and Federation general staffs and with the national Mine Action Centre. He also served in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for the Current & Crisis branch, including former Yugoslavia issues. After attending the Australian Defence College in 1999 and serving as Chief Strategic Policy section at SHAPE, he moved to the European Union’s Military Committee as its first UK Deputy Military Representative. His final posting was from 2002 to 2005 in Moscow, where he started up and led NATO’s Military Liaison Mission to the Russian Federation, working on military cooperation projects with the Russian Ministry of Defence. On leaving Moscow he was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. He retired from the Army in December 2005. He now enjoys giving talks on cruise ships, at military establishments and schools and to charity audiences about the Cold War and other current and historical issues; these include talks under the Government-sponsored pro bono ‘Speakers for Schools’ scheme. He also helps to train British military diplomats at Chicksands. He is the Chairman of the BRIXMIS Association, the Patron of the British Ex-Services Association of Western Australia and a Governor of Rendcomb College near Cirencester. From 2008 until 2013 he was the editor of The Guards Magazine, the in-house journal of the Household Division (Household Cavalry and Foot Guards), and is a former member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides.
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THURSDAY 20TH OCTOBER Ar tificial Intelligence: Ghost in the Machine Sid Odedra 5.30PM – 6.30PM, LAYARD THEATRE ALL SIXTH FORM Roboticist Sid Odedra has worked on developing intelligent machines for over a decade. His early work focused on saving our soldiers on the battlefield using a range of robotic systems. With a background in design, Sid moved on to the creative use of advanced technology and intelligent machines to create spectacles for a number of live events including the London Olympic Ceremonies, London Fashion Week and Shanghai Auto Show. His current focus is on future autonomous vehicles and their ability to cope in extreme environments such as Mars.
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THURSDAY 20TH OCTOBER Ex Machina - Film Night 7.30PM - 9.15PM plus post film discussion, LAYARD THEATRE FIFTH AND SIXTH FORM Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) a programmer at a huge Internet company, wins a contest that enables him to spend a week at the private estate of Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), his firm’s brilliant CEO. When he arrives, Caleb learns that he has been chosen to be the human component in a Turing test to determine the capabilities and consciousness of Ava (Alicia Vikander), a beautiful robot. However, it soon becomes evident that Ava is far more self-aware and deceptive than either man imagined. (Directed by Alex Garland – released January 2015)
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FRIDAY 21ST OCTOBER What is Intelligence? Julian Baggini 11.50AM-1.05PM, LAYARD THEATRE UPPER AND LOWER SIXTH (CONNECTIONS) Julian Baggini’s latest book is The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World (Yale University Press) He runs the website Microphilosophy and is the author of several books, including Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind (Granta), Complaint (Profile) and The Ego Trick (Granta). He has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Financial Times, Prospect and The New Statesman, as well as for the think tanks, The Institute of Public Policy Research and Demos. He is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine. He has also appeared as a character in two Alexander McCall-Smith novels. He has published several books on philosophy for the general reader, including: • Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the Headlines (Oxford University Press) • New British Philosophy:The Interviews (with Jeremy Stangroom ) • Atheism - A Very Short Introduction (Oxford) • Great Thinkers A-Z • What’s It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life • The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety Nine Other Thought Experiments • Do You Think What You Think You Think? (with Jeremy Stangroom, Granta Books, Oct 2006) • Welcome to Everytown, A Journey into the English Mind (Granta) • The Virtues of the Table: How to eat and think (2014) • Freedom Regained – The Possibility of Free Will
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As the festival moves towards its conclusion, the philosopher, Julian Baggini, take on the big question.
FRIDAY 21ST OCTOBER Maths, Monkeys and Machines Alex Bellos 1.45PM-3.05PM, ASSEMBLY HALL WHOLE SCHOOL – PARENTS COLLECTING FOR HALF-TERM PARTICULARLY WELCOME
“Think of the best storyteller you know and the coolest teacher you ever had, and now you’ve got some idea of what Alex Bellos is like.” Steven Strogatz, Cornell University
“Alex is one of the few people who can talk about numbers without being intimidating.” Evan Davis, BBC
Hi, I’m Alex Bellos. I write and I talk. Usually, about mathematics. Sometimes, about football and Brazil. My popular science books - Alex’s Adventures in Numberland and Alex Through the Looking-Glass - are both bestsellers and have been translated into more than 20 languages. (In America they have the titles Here’s Looking at Euclid and The Grapes of Math). I write a maths blog and a puzzle blog for the Guardian and frequently speak on maths at conferences, festivals, in schools and in companies. My maths blog won the prize for best science blog 2016 awarded by the Association of British Science Writers. My latest book, written together with Ben Lyttleton, is Football School, a children’s book that uses football to explain everything from maths to zoology and from English to fashion. That’s me on the right playing football on Mars.
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I am also the author of the mathematical colouring book Snowflake, Seashell, Star, a collaboration with Edmund Harriss. In America the title is Patterns of the Universe. If you are a teacher and would like a pack of free printable images from this book, please email me letting me know which country you are in so I can send you the right pack. Another new project is LOOP, pool on an elliptical table. I am also the author of Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life, a look at contemporary Brazil through football, and I co-wrote PelÊ’s autobiography.
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JANE DURAN - POET IN RESIDENCE Jane Duran (b. 1944) is a writer whose work is often preoccupied with memory and exile. Born in Cuba, she grew up in the USA and Chile, the daughter of an American mother and a Spanish father who met after he fled Franco’s victorious fascist regime. Her father fought with the Republican army, and his silence about this experience is the haunting omission which movingly informs her second collection, Silences from the Spanish Civil War. This fascination with her mixed roots is evident in the imagery of Breathe Now, Breathe which won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The various strands of her heritage are woven together like the fibres in her ‘Braided Rug’, or as one reviewer puts it, Duran “twists her hybrid colours into rich, sensual, and perfectly controlled statements of memory and loss...” (Adam Thorpe, The Observer). In her own life Duran has continued to encounter different cultures; this is reflected in some of her poems such as ‘Time Zones’ which imagines locations she has visited around the world. On the other hand, her childhood and youth in the United States are also powerful sources of imagery, its landscapes and streetscapes intensely conveyed in poems like ‘Coat’. Her husband is Algerian and they have a son who Duran celebrates in her tender sequence ‘Zagharit’. This sequence is from her third collection, Coastal, which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2005 she was given a Cholmondeley Award. She currently lives in the UK. In her poem ‘Stroke’ which describes the loss of language suffered by her mother, Duran states “I go in search of what is missing”. In this case it’s the words her mother is no longer able to communicate, but in her work she’s often drawn to what remains unsaid. ‘Not Talking about Franco, 1959’ ends with an image of her uncle smoothing out a lace tablecloth, a gesture eloquent of his inability to speak openly. Yet alongside this exploration of silence, Duran’s work also talks intimately about human experiences. She finds the
words for grief in poems about childlessness and illness, and for joy in celebrations of her son. The emotional freight of such moments is sometimes carried by ritual, like the face to face weeping in ‘There are Women’ or the rhythms of an old recipe in ‘Snow Pudding’. What Michael Donaghy described as Duran’s “quiet authority” is also evident in her reading. Like the rivers which form a recurring metaphor in her work, Duran’s clear voice follows beautifully the lyrical flow of each poem.
Spanish Peasant Boy
after a drawing by Benjamín Palencia Perhaps you have sworn to be still like this, in your loud stone boots your cropped hair and sleeves too short in a ploughed field, the civil war still far from your village. You can hear it already and pay attention. It will come, one day, right into the square the sheep pass over as my hand passes over this paper, into the fastnesses of doorways and sheepfolds. Perhaps you will see my father in the band of soldiers with his hair cropped too, the cypresses toiling along the edge of your field Perhaps you will leave everything as he did and cross borders, go to France, America, anywhere that will have you. From ‘Silences from the Spanish Civil War’
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