Hundreds of years ago, news was carried from place to place by people on foot or by horse. It took days, weeks and sometimes months for people to receive news. Now it is possible to send words and pictures around the world in seconds. Billions of people learn about news stories of their own country and all over the world every day, either by watching TV or reading newspapers.

    Newspapers have been an important part of everyday life since the 18th century. Many countries have hundreds of different newspapers. How do newspaper editors decide which news stories to print? Why do they print some stories and not others? What makes a good newspaper story?

    Firstly, it is important to report new stories. TV stations can report news much faster than newspapers. Yet, newspapers give more about the same story. They may also look at the story in another way, or they may print completely different stories to those on TV.

    Secondly, a news story has to be interesting and unusual. People don't want to read stories about everyday life as a result, many stories are about some kind of danger and seem to be "bad" news. For example, newspapers never print stories about planes landing safely, instead they print stories about plane accidents.

    Another factor (因素) is also very important in many news stories. Many people are interested in news in foreign countries, but more prefer to read stories about people, places and events in their own country. So the stories on the front page in Chinese newspapers are usually very different from the ones in British, French and American newspapers.

    Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and I wished her every success. But part of me didn't. I actually wanted her to fail in some ways because I believe that failure can be good for our learning process. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematic (存在问题的) victory. First-time success is usually a fluke (侥幸). First-time failure, however, is supposed to be the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn.

    In Africa they describe a good cook as “She who has broken many pots.” If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility (可信) their failures gave them.

    I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I know that one column I write is going to be the worst column. I try my best every day. I have learned to love that column. A successful column usually means that I am discussing my familiar topic, writing in a style I am used to or saying the same things as anyone else but in a better way.

    My younger daughter is a trapeze artist (荡秋千演员). She spent three years practising a show, and she did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change it but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored. And if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting (使……服从于) her body to all that stress. She risked failure and great public embarrassment in order to feed her soul.

    My granddaughter is a perfectionist. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do better next time. I hope I can tell her, though, that it's not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.

    By now, you've probably been warned that a robot is coming for your job. But rather than repeat the warning, I've decided to throw down a challenge: man against machine.

    Start with the task we're doing right now: communicating in fluent human. We're sharing abstract ideas through words that we choose with an understanding of their slight difference and impact. We don't just speak in human; we speak as humans. A robot who says that science is fun is delivering a line (念一句话). A human who says that science is fun is telling you something important about being alive.

    Here's another inbuilt advantage we take for granted: as humans we are limited by design. We are bound in time: we die. We are bound in space: we can't be in more than one place at a time. That means when I speak to an audience, I am giving them something special. It's a custom-made, one-off, 100% robot-free delivery, from today's one-and-only Australian Chief Scientist.

    True, I now come in digital versions, through Twitter and Facebook and other platforms, but the availability of those tools hasn't stopped people from inviting me to speak in person. Digital Alan seems to increase the appetite for human Alan, just as Spotify (a digital music service) can increase the demand for a musician's live performances.

    Thanks to technology, many goods and services are cheaper, better and more accessible than ever before. We like our mass-produced bread, and our on-tap lectures and our automated FitBit advice. But automation hasn't killed the artisan bakery (面包店). Online courses haven't killed the booming, alongside their machine equivalents.

    Here's a third argument for the win. We humans have learned the habit of civilization. Let me explain this point by a story. A few years go, some researchers set out to study the way the people interact with robots. They sent out a small robot to patrol (巡逻) the local mall. That robot had a terrible time, and the villains of the story were children. They kicked him, bullied him, and smacked (掌击) him in the head.

    The point is not that the children were violent. The point is that the adults were not. They restrained whatever primitive impulse (冲动) they might have felt in childhood to smack something smaller and weaker in the head, because they had absorbed the habit of living together. We call it civilization. If we want artificial intelligence for the people, we'll need every bit of that civilizing instinct.

    Together, these points suggest to me that humanity has a powerful competitive edge. We can coexist with our increasingly capable machines and we can make space for the full breadth of human talents to flourish.

Don't Drop the Ball

    Drop prevention risk assessment is really important. Everyone knows objects get dropped on work sites – there's nothing radical about that. In Australia, mining has the third highest fatality rate of any industry (4.4 fatalities per 100,000 workers in 2015), and in less well-documented areas like India the fatality rate is even higher. A lot of these fatalities come from dropped objects. It's worth trying to address this and work out just how big the risk is and where it comes from. At the end of the day, safety should be a priority in any industry and it should come as no surprise that addressing safety issues early can actually save money, long-term, for companies. It doesn't look good for a mining company if people are getting injured and equipment damaged from falling objects.

    The risks from dropped objects come from all sorts of areas; it's not just a matter of dropped tools. We're talking about sites characterized by a lot of activities, where all sorts of things can come loose or fall, whether its light fittings or objects like rocks falling off transporting belts. The risks are largely personal but are also financial: if a piece of equipment gets damaged it will need replacing. That's a pretty strong inspiration for companies to address these risks. In terms of frequency, here in Australia we're looking at around 18% of compensation claims coming from workers being hit by moving objects, but those are just the claims – the frequency is likely higher. Around 28% of deaths and injuries come from such incidents, too. As I said earlier, that's just Australia; some industries don't keep statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to find other countries report comparable rates. That's a lot of accidents that could be prevented with adequate safety measures.

    It's important to take an active approach. It's a lot easier and cheaper to address these risks during the installation or maintenance phases by adding barriers to the inside of guard railings on walkways and transporting systems and adding nets to fixed devices. There are safety mechanisms available, but it's up to the companies to install them. It is a lot more efficient to add barriers right from the start rather than waiting for an accident and then thinking, "Should we be safer?", when they should have reduced these risks from the start.

    On the very first day, God created the cow and said to him, "As a cow, you must go to the field, working under the sun all day long! And I will give you 40 years to live." The cow objected, "What? You want me to live such a tough life for 40 years? Let me have 20 years, and I'll give the rest back to you." So God agreed.

    On the second day, God created the dog and said, "You'll be man's best friend, guarding his house and eating his leftovers. I'll give you a life span of 30 years." The dog shook his head. "Eating leftovers for 30 years? No way! I'll give half back to you!" So God agreed.

    Then, God created the monkey, saying, "Your job is to entertain people. You've got to do monkey tricks and make them laugh. And you'll live 20 years."" Do monkey tricks to make them laugh? 10 years will do." the monkey said. So God agreed.

    Finally, God created the man. "You will be the man. All you need to do is to sleep, eat, and play, simply enjoying your life. And I'll give you 20 years to live." Thinking for a while, the man replied, "I can be the man, but I want to take all the years that the cow, the dog and the monkey didn't want." So God agreed.

    Since then, man eats, sleeps and plays in the first 2 decades, marries and spends the next 2 decades like a cow, working very hard to support his family. Then when he has children, he lives 15 years like a dog, taking care of the house and eating whatever is given to him. And when he is old, he retires and lives 10 years like a monkey, doing tricks to amuse his grandchildren.

THE 2024 OXFORD POETRY PRIZE

Oxford Poetry hosts the annual Oxford Poetry Prize, awarded for a single poem in the English language. The 2024 Prize opens on I May 2024. The guest judge is Rachel Long. The winner of the Oxford Poetry Prize receives £1,000, the runner-up £200, and third place £100. All cash prizes will be paid out in full no later than 90 days after the public announcement of the judge's decision. The winning poets are also offered publication in Oxford Poetry.

About the 2024 guest judge

Rachel Long's debut collection, My Darling from the Lions(Picador, 2020/Tin House, 2021), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition featured in the New York Times Book Review and was named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.

Submission guidelines

*Each poem must consist of no more than 50 lines. Blank lines, titles, subtitles, and dedications (献词) are not counted as lines.

*The Competition is open to writers living anywhere in the world.

*Poems submitted to the Oxford Poetry Prize must not have been previously published elsewhere, whether in print or online(including but not limited to blogs, websites, and social media).

Terms and conditions.

*The competition is open to anyone age 18 or over on the date of their submission. Submission of a poem to the Oxford Poetry Prize constitutes the entrant's (参赛者的) acceptance of these terms and conditions. Entries that do not obey these terms and conditions will be disqualified from the competition.

*Entries are welcome from 1 May 2024. The deadline for submitting entries is midnight UTC (国际协调时间) on 31 August 2024. Works received after that date will not be considered.