Category: Technology
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‘God-Like’ – Chapter 1 excerpt
I’m really looking forward to getting this out in a few weeks! It’s been a wild ride to write because, as you’ll know, AI right now is such a shape-shifting, slippery beast. The upshot of that is that this book can only ever be a snapshot… but this is why I’ve been super keen to…
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In Which Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook is the New Church, and We Are All Its Priests
In a recent speech, Mark Zuckerberg has declared that Facebook is the new Church, and its users should all be like Priests. “Communities give us that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are not alone, that we have something better ahead to work for,” he noted, before adding that…
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‘When We Rise Up, We Must Not Lift Away… Real Hope is Horizontal’
Thrilled to announce that my talk at TEDx Exeter is now online! It was a huge honour to be asked to close the event, which was on the theme of hope. ‘Instead of getting out of our heads, we must work with our hands.’ In Countering Political Turmoil with a New Summer of Love I look…
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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…