A day without journalists: could citizen journalism fill the void?

Starting young: A citizen journalist

What would happen if you sucked all the journalists out of the UK for 24 hours? Would citizen reporters and social media be able to step into the breach, or would confusion reign? 

This was the question posed by the Guardian's Paul Lewis at a debate at the Frontline Club yesterday evening (June 28), which brought together panellists from Sky, the BBC, and a citizen journalism website to discuss the future of newsgathering and the changing media landscape.

Yet this scenario of a country without journalists was similar to what happened during the riots last August, said Lewis, as the violence continued into the early hours.

Science at the movies: Prometheus and artificial intelligence

The search for the origins of humanity, meeting one's maker, and discovering why we are here: Ridley Scott's latest film Prometheus tackles some big themes. But arguably the most interesting one surrounds the issue of what it is to be human, raised in the form of the android David.

Both Alien and its sequel Aliens, which Prometheus is said to be a prequel to (although Ridley Scott has disputed this, only conceding that the films all inhabit the same universe), included androids in their crew.

But in Prometheus, the android's story is shifted more to centre, focusing on what defines humanity, and whether a robot can ever hope to achieve it.

As the film critic Mark Kermode said, "Michael Fassbender [on scene-stealing form as David] is really the centre of the movie. And in fact it is clearly that Scott is less interested in making an Alien prequel than he is in building up to the ideas of Blade Runner, Blade Runner being about what does it mean to be human if you are an android."