Elementary My Dear Reader
Learning difficulties, a term in need of improvement, is an issue that concern us all. Because it is amongst us all.
This past week my cultural intake has been active – and across the board top class.
I saw the Hollywood (Sony) version of ’The Girl With a Dragon Tatoo’ – and found it a worthy representation of the book and the original film. Rooney Mara, who has a Golden Globe nomination for her interpretation, was as excellent as Noomi Rapace in the role of the formidable Lisbeth Salander.
I then read Robert Harris’ latest thriller ’The Fear Index’ – in which the central character, Dr Alex Hoffman, has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that track human emotions, enabling it to predict movements in the financial markets with uncanny accuracy.It is a bleak look into a future that is already here – and the terrible havoc artificial intelligence can cause. Because Robert Harris is such an excellent writer, whose research I trust completely, I enjoyed the book, but it left me with a sense of claustrophobia and in need of emergency oxygen. Oxygen in the form of human emotions and irrationality, not just life based on calculations.
Finally, I watched an episode of BBC’s superb new series of Sherlock Holmes last night. It is a modern adaption of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic. By making Sherlock and Dr Watson young and by using multi media technology the creators have brought Sherlock into the 21st century in the most exciting way.The casting of Benedict Cumberbatch (wonderful name) as Sherlock and Martin Freeman (from The Office and Breaking and Entering) as Dr Watson, is absolutely perfect. Together they tackle the problems of modern day crime using Sherlock’s phenomenal way of reasoning and Dr Watson’s pragmatism.
So what, as Sherlock would ask himself, links Lisbeth Salander, Alex Hoffman and Sherlock Holmes together?
Elementary Dear Reader – all three have Asperger syndrome.
Lisbeth Salander – in case there is still a single person out there unaware of this modern Pippi Longstocking (Stieg Larsson’s own description of his leading superwoman), has a brilliant mind especially within IT, but certainly falls short on social graces.
Same is true for both Hoffman and Holmes.
-Ordinary people fill their hard drive with all kinds of rubbish, says Sherlock in despair, and that makes it very hard, he continues, to get to the stuff that really matters. All that matters to me is work. Without that, my brain rots.
-Put that in your blog, he shouts at Watson.
I have now Sherlock.
