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The Ageless and the Useless
In The Religion of the Future, Roberto Unger, a professor of law at Harvard, identifies humanity’s three “irreparable flaws”: mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability. We are plagued by death. We...
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Stuck Behind a Plow in India or China
So this is going to come off as more than a bit cynical, but, for what it’s worth, I don’t intend it to be. Sometime in 2014, Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, proposed the following: “The biggest...
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Fit the Tool to the Person, Not the Person to the Tool
I recently had a conversation with a student about the ethical quandaries raised by the advent of self-driving cars. Hypothetically, for instance, how would a self-driving car react to a pedestrian who...
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Machines, Work, and the Value of People
Late last month, Microsoft released a “bot” that guesses your age based on an uploaded picture. The bot tended to be only marginally accurate and sometimes hilariously (or disconcertingly) wrong....
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Resisting the Habits of the Algorithmic Mind
Algorithms, we are told, “rule our world.” They are ubiquitous. They lurk in the shadows, shaping our lives without our consent. They may revoke your driver’s license, determine whether you get your...
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Google Photos and the Ideal of Passive Pervasive Documentation
I’ve been thinking, recently, about the past and how we remember it. That this year marks the 20th anniversary of my high school graduation accounts for some of my reflective reminiscing. Flipping...
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Et in Facebook ego
Today is the birthday of the friend whose death elicited this post two years ago. I republish it today for your consideration. In Nicolas Poussin’s mid-seventeenth century painting, Et in Arcadia ego,...
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A Technological History of Modernity
I’m writing chiefly to commend to you what Alan Jacobs has recently called his “big fat intellectual project.” The topic that has driven his work over the last few years Jacobs describes as follows:...
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Humanist Technology Criticism
“Who are the humanists, and why do they dislike technology so much?” That’s what Andrew McAfee wants to know. McAfee, formerly of Harvard Business School, is now a researcher at MIT and the author,...
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Digital Devices and Learning to Grow Up
Last week the NY Times ran the sort of op-ed on digital culture that the cultured despisers love to ridicule. In it, Jane Brody made a host of claims about the detrimental consequences of digital media...
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