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By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Last year I challenged Artificial Intelligence to produce a column in my style of writing, and the results were published in this newspaper. This year I repeated the experiment to see what advances AI had made.Working with Matthew Berube, head of...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

I was biking in the countryside of Montague one summer day (remember those?), and I pedaled past a house with a substantial side yard furnished only with a small table and two simple chairs. Later, when I was home, I watched the sunset from my back...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Recently I had an appointment with my primary care provider, and after checking in with the receptionist, I looked to find a seat in the waiting room.One of the only seats available was perpendicular to a young woman with a child about 5 or 6 months...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Recently it occurred to me that in all my years of writing newspaper columns, I’ve never written one about the strangest life story I’ve ever come across, in terms of the wild twists and turns it took in a relatively short expanse of time. It is the...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

When I was a teenager, among the last things in the world I thought would render me uncool and out-of-it when I got older was technology. In fact, I don’t remember ever using, or even coming across the word “technology,” except my knowing MIT stood...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

When I was 18 years old, I hitchhiked alone from western Massachusetts to St. Petersburg, Florida and back. Hitchhiking was fairly common among young people then, although not typically for such a long distance. I had some trials along the way, not...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

About a mile from where I live, there is a convenience store and a doughnut shop. For a period of a few years, a woman of perhaps 60 years of age could be found standing outside one of these establishments on most days. She would be shuffling her...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Sometimes I turn on the television for what a friend of mine calls “bubble gum for the mind,” just something to chew on a little bit. Once in a while that expected slight entertainment turns into something more than that, something riveting, and not...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

I suspect a fair number of readers are aware who Timothy Leary was, and more still have heard his name as part of the lexicon of popular culture. For those who do not know, he was one of the more famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective)...

By RICHARD MCCARTHY

Recently, I was at an airport and waiting for the same plane was a group of what looked to be about 12-to-14-year-old boys, all wearing the same black sweatsuits, with the same logo on the front of the sweatshirt. You could feel the electricity...