February 2012
5 posts
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“The hallmark of a deep explanation is that it answers more than you ask.”
– Max Tegmark
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“What kinds of developmental thresholds would any planet of sentient beings pass...”
– Kevin Kelly
January 2012
10 posts
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“So there are two classes of data which help solve different types of problem....”
– Alan Mitchell
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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature....”
– Karl Schroeder
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“The copyright wars are just the beta version of a long coming war on...”
– Cory Doctorow
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December 2011
9 posts
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Ethical Technology, Part 5
Well, I think I’m winding down here. I can tell that I’m close to being out of things to say (for now, anyway); my mind has begun to wander back to my last multi-part monoramble on seeing time… Perhaps I’ll check in on that sometime soon.
In the meantime, the last few notes I had are probably not enough to chatter on about individually, so I’ll just briefly mention them...
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Ethical Technology, Part 4
So far, my ramblings have gone from monopolies of information to the filter bubble to the economics of the internet.
Today, what about automation in general? Is is ultimately dehumanizing?
Cyborgology had a good post recently about automation called Commentary on Race Against Machine, in which they noted that Norbert Weiner, mathematician, father of cybernetics and author of The Human Use of...
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Ethical Technology, Part 3
Continuing these thoughts in a meandering sort of way (Part 1 → Part 2 → You Are Here).
Yesterday I was talking about the filter bubbles that we are so easily caught within—especially on the internet, where an algorithmic approach to dealing with information begins with benign personalization, but can lead to a very real distortion of our worldview. The better the machine knows you, the more it...
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Ethical Technology, Part 2
So, picking up on yesterday.
The next thing that came to mind as far as ethics and technology are concerned is the filter bubble (as coined by Eli Pariser, author of the book of the same name).
Whether done algorithmically or not, the filter bubble is the result of the intentional routing of relationships through conceptual filters, rather than real-world situations. This is another one of those...
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Ethical Technology
A few weeks ago, I sat down for a cup of coffee and conversation with a new friend—someone who had been put in touch with me by a mutual friend of ours who knew that we had a shared interest in technology, ethics, and all the “big ideas” in between. Vance teaches this stuff—hes’s an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy department at Guilford College—while...
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“Over time, to the extent the customer service experience gets worse, it will...”
– analyst on today’s announcement that the US Postal Service will be making $3billion in cuts to its First Class delivery service.
So, “almost” nothing? That “almost” includes a ton, if you want it to. Here’s just one example—I intend to keep making those as...
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“What does it mean that the same hopes, described in the same words, for a...”
– A passage from Howard Rheingold’s The Virtual Community, which, though written in 2000, chillingly corresponds to what is going on all around us today. You should read it.
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“When a site’s goal is to satisfy the great sucking maw of the Internet with a...”
– Charles Taylor (on the problem of film criticism, among other things, and how the Internet is at least in part responsible)
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“The present day is no less crazy. We routinely do things that just five years...”
– Charlie Brooker
November 2011
17 posts
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“The shiny bright City of Tomorrow is also full of slums and favelas.
We get...”
– Charlie Stross on worldbuilding
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“We’ll probably never fully debug our lives. In fact, it is in those “reboot”...”
– Michael Babwahsingh
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My Favorite Records
I was inspired to post this self-indulgence by the wonderful Björk, who, by way of the equally wonderful Alex Ross, shared her favorite records just the other day.
Björk chose 13 albums; I tried to stick to the same number, but ended up with one more. Two are Requiems, which may seem odd but I have something like 15 different requiems in my collection and do find myself playing these particular...
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“I’m really kind of astonished at how readily a great many people I...”
– Jaron Lanier (It was hard to know where to start and stop transcribing this—it’s from a video—because he really packs in a ton of interesting ideas into a small verbal space.)
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“Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems. Obviously...”
– Jack Schulze
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“It gets very much like Baudrillard in a way. We lived in a real world where we...”
– Doug Rushkoff
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“I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist about these things, but I think the reason...”
– Doug Rushkoff
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“I think the popular perception that we’re a lot like the Victorians is in large...”
– William Gibson
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“I didn’t have a manifesto. I had some discontent. It seemed to me that...”
– William Gibson
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October 2011
8 posts
“Altogether, roughly 20 percent of Earth’s net terrestrial primary production,...”
– Brandon Keim, reflecting upon Earth’s population reaching 7 billion as of today
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“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
– Beautiful. Steve Jobs’ last words, from his sister’s eulogy
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“The future arrives too soon and in the wrong order.”
– Alvin Toffler
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“We know that the major players are positioning themselves for a very uncertain...”
– Curtis White, on “The Late Word”
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September 2011
6 posts
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