Kit Wilson | The Spectator columnists & writers

Facebook has rebranded itself as Meta and last month chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the creation of 10,000 jobs to help build the ‘metaverse’ — a concept so radical nobody yet knows what it really is. People in the media tend to describe it as ‘a 3D version of the internet’. Facebook describes it rather vaguely as a network of ‘virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you’. Some suspect it might actually be hell. The term metaverse first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, in which future humans distract themselves from economic collapse by submerging themselves in a parallel virtual reality world. The contemporary meaning appears to be a little different.

We need to talk about transhumanism

This weekend, hundreds of people from across the globe will gather in Madrid to discuss how to turn themselves into a new species. The occasion is TransVision, the world’s biggest annual meet-up of transhumanists — and probably the most important intellectual summit you’ve never heard of. This year, anti-ageing specialist Aubrey de Grey will explain why he thinks most people alive today have a 50/50 chance of living to a thousand years old. The CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Max More, will discuss cryogenics, the process by which the newly deceased are frozen in giant, stainless steel vats and preserved for resurrection down the line. And Google’s Ray Kurzweil will talk about the 'singularity': the moment in our not-too-distant future — he reckons around 2045 — when artificial intelligence finally outstrips the collective brainpower of mankind and absorbs us into its plans.

BBC sports coverage is becoming unwatchable

Back when I was a kid, just before the internet flattened the world, I spent my Saturday afternoons listening to live football on the radio. The signal came and went, voices bobbed up above the waves of static and sank back down into their crackly depths, but the experience was always magical. I clung to the commentators’ every word and watched the ball dance from player to player in my mind. Probably the most memorable voice was the Northern Irish snarl of Alan Green. Anyone familiar with BBC Radio 5 Live will know his style: irate and indignant, liable to explode at any moment about some mistimed pass or bad tackle — but always, always entertaining. Green has worked for 5 Live for more than 45 years, but is now being shuffled out by the BBC.

Michael Seresin – from film noir to pinot noir

Michael Seresin claims, rather modestly, to ‘have no palate’, choosing instead to describe wine with light, colour and form. These are not your typical winemaker’s terms, but they make perfect sense given his unusual back story. Born and raised in New Zealand, Seresin emigrated to Europe in 1966 to pursue a career in cinematography. Movie buffs will know what happened next — Seresin, in his own words, ‘did really well, really quickly’, making a name for himself with a series of Alan Parker flicks: Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame. It was during this period that he leased a house in Italy — still his ‘favourite country in the world’ — and fell in love with wine. ‘We were surrounded by winemaking families, many of whom had been there for generations — I really loved the cultural life round there.

What’s going wrong in Bristol?

When a man is tired of London, he just needs to relocate to Bristol — or so the stream of westbound émigrés would suggest. Each year, hundreds up sticks and flee the capital in search of its laid-back lifestyle. Bristol prides itself on being the chilled-out alternative to the big smoke — a bit like Brighton, but further west and therefore cooler. Here they swap the ruthless capitalism of their blowhard cousins in London for giant water slides, balloon festivals and radical street art. But the city is still chippy about London’s cultural dominance. I grew up in south Bristol, and went to the same school as its most famous export, the graffiti artist Banksy. Banksy’s caustic barbs — against politicians, priests and bankers — are a miniature snow globe of Bristolian attitudes.

There’s one obvious question about immigration, but nobody is asking it

If you were to close your eyes at any debate on immigration, you might reasonably picture the participants standing back-to-back, shouting and gesticulating to opposite corners of the room. On such occasions, there’s typically only one point on which everyone actually agrees: that very highly skilled migrants – doctors, engineers, scientists – are welcome here in Britain. Oddly, though, nobody ever seems follow up with the obvious question: what about the countries these migrants leave behind? Look at the four nations from which we take most foreign doctors – India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria. Is it not unfair to deprive them of their brightest medical minds? South Africa has the world’s largest population of people with AIDS – are its 5,000 doctors here really being put to best use? Finding the evidence to prove the actual effects of immigration policy is, of course, tricky.

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