Category: Technology
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The Cloud of All-Knowing | Democracy and Demagogues in the Age of Data
“True power is not the strength to force someone into slavery, but to make them happily lock their own manacles, as if chains were adding to their liberty.” Yesterday The Observer published a long and detailed piece that attempted to join (some of) the dots between the ‘big data’ socio-political technology firm Cambridge Analytica, and…
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Robots Should Pay Tax | How Much Does a Stormtrooper Make Each Month?
Chances are, your job is under threat. Chances are, in 20 years, you could be being replaced by a robot. Automation is coming, and it won’t look much like Star Wars. The problem is, what happened to C3PO’s human predecessor? Or his 6 million predecessors – the highly trained, skilled translators to and from those languages…
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A Theology of Human Machines | Solving the ‘Modest Problem of Death’
A fascinating read in the latest New Republic, reviewing Irish writer Mark O’Connor’s new book, To Be A Machine – subtitled ‘Adventures among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers and Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death.’ Anna Wiener writes: O’Connell is less interested in evaluating technology than in the people who make it and its philosophical implications. As he…
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Body-Cams for Teachers
Absolutely nothing terrifyingly Orwellian about this then. I think the key issue here is about creep in terms of use. “The cameras are not on all the time. Where there is a perceived threat to a member of staff or pupil for example, they are used. It’s not like a surveillance camera.” That, I think,…
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The Only Way to Have a Free Press is to Pay For It
One of the things that’s been on my mind in the wake of recent political events is the vital importance to liberal democracy of a genuinely independent and critical free press. It strikes me that if we want a free press, we’re really do need to be willing to pay for it. In Raoul Martinez’s Creating…
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7-11… 9/11… 18th Century… Europe… | On History
Today I overheard two people talking, one of whom seemed to be (not the first time I’d heard this) conflating 7-Eleven and 9/11. ‘Wait,’ she said when brought up on this. ‘They’re not the same thing?’ No. One is a chain of convenience stores, the other a major terrorist attack and one of the defining moments…