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In an essay titled “Looking forward, looking backward,’ philosopher of technology, Andrew Feenberg writes (in Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity, The MIT Press, 2010, p. 61; my emphasis, B.O.):
The utopian and dystopian visions of the …
In an essay titled “Looking forward, looking backward,’ philosopher of technology, Andrew Feenberg writes (in Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity, The MIT Press, 2010, p. 61; my emphasis, B.O.):
The utopian and dystopian visions of the …
“Internet addiction” has lived a strange life since the Nineties. In 1995, a New York psychiatrist introduced the term, not to describe a real affliction of internet users, but to parody certain diagnostic tendencies in his field. Then other people, …
The digital era exposes citizens to a dizzying range of sources of information and evidence. The old days when public information was vetted by a few prominent newspapers and TV and radio stations are over. Under these circumstances, censorship and …
We hear a lot about “election integrity” or lack thereof, particularly around the issues of counting the vote and the ballot box. But the truth is that elections are more likely to be stolen via search engine manipulation effects (SEME).…
Will artificial intelligence become the greatest boon to higher education since online learning? (This assumes that online learning was a boon, which is a topic for another day.) Or will it mean the utter destruction of academia as we know …
Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) threaten to replace the cash we use with programmable, trackable, and censorable tokens controlled by governments. Your financial choices could be suppressed, and privacy eliminated. Based on what I’ve learned and experienced directly, this could …
I feel scared. Very scared.
Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.
This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.
Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to …
A well-worn and tear-soaked origin story, vaguely reminiscent of biblical incarnation, tends to accompany press reporting on new fertility ventures. Once upon a time there was an ordinary Californian woman with great LinkedIn connections who was trying for some particular …
The UK has been consumed by a scandal involving the use of faulty accounting software, Horizon from Fujitsu, used by the Post Office to accuse postmasters and postmistresses of stealing funds. Under UK law, the Post Office is empowered to …
An older relative of mine — I’ll call her Jan — moved house a couple of years ago. She’s in her late seventies, and technology scares her: she doesn’t like the fact that everything is done via app or website. …
It would seem as if Martin Heidegger’s warning against the ‘essence of technology’ – Gestell, or Enframing – a way of thinking that frames everything we think of, do, and aspire to, in terms of parameters of optimal use or …
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” is a quote generally attributed to Charles Baudelaire – or possibly Keyser Söze depending on who you ask on the internet. Something similar can be said …
The United States has the distinction the world over for being a home to the First Amendment, which guarantees free expression. And yet a mere seven years after its ratification in 1791, Congress violated it in the most severe way …
One wonders what Ulrich Beck – the theorist of ‘risk society’ – would say, if he were alive today, given the kinds of ‘risk’ one currently faces on all sides. Yet, with hindsight one can discern adumbrations of the outrageous …