Midwit machines are destroying thinking

First, a confession. Sometimes I go on a super-geeky site for dedicated weather watchers. It’s probably because I am quite manic depressive – and British – and definitely because I adore warmth and despise dank. That means I can be tipped into doom by anti-cyclonic gloom or lifted into ecstasy by a decent heatwave.

Whatever the precise cause, this mild obsession has made me a long-term member of that weather forum, where we natter about polar vortices and the ‘Beast from the East’ like meteorological trainspotters. Over the years I’ve got to know the other forum members pretty well, despite never having met them; we banter and bicker and sometimes discuss biscuits. It’s like a kind of low-key pub with extra charts from Meteosat.

But of late I’ve noticed the banter is changing in tone – t