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Reading Frankenstein: Chapters 7 and 8
Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6. _____________________________________________________ “Man has, as it were, become a kind...
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Reading Frankenstein: Chapters 9 and 10
Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapters 7 & 8. _____________________________________________________ A little over a...
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Reading Frankenstein: Chapters 11–13
Earlier posts in this series: Walton’s Letters, Chapters 1 & 2, Chapters 3 & 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapters 7 & 8, 9 & 10. _____________________________________________________ I’ve...
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Jaron Lanier Wants to Secularize AI
In 2010, one of the earliest posts on this blog noted an op-ed in the NY Times by Jaron Lanier titled “The First Church of Robotic.” In it, Lanier lamented the rise quasi-religious aspirations...
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Silencing the Heretics: How the Faithful Respond to Criticism of Technology
I started to write a post about a few unhinged reactions to an essay published by Nicholas Carr in this weekend’s WSJ, “Automation Makes Us Dumb.” Then I realized that I already wrote that post back...
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Do Artifacts Have Ethics?
Writing about “technology and the moral dimension,” tech writer and Gigaom founder, Om Malik made the following observation: “I can safely say that we in tech don’t understand the emotional aspect of...
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What Do We Want, Really?
I was in Amish country last week. Several times a day I heard the clip-clop of horse hooves and the whirring of buggy wheels coming down the street and then receding into the distance–a rather soothing...
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Algorithms Who Art in Apps, Hallowed Be Thy Code
If you want to understand the status of algorithms in our collective imagination, Ian Bogost proposes the following exercise in his recent essay in the Atlantic: “The next time you see someone talking...
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Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Thoughtlessness
In the mid-twentieth century, Hannah Arendt wrote extensively about the critical importance of learning to think in the aftermath of a great rupture in our tradition of thought. She wrote of the...
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Consider the Traffic Light Camera
It looks like I may be getting a traffic citation in the mail within the next few days. A few nights ago, while making a left into my neighborhood, I was slowed by a car that made a creeping right...
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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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