2 days agoSocietal Change in the Digital AgeA rather long time ago, we figured out that fire wasn’t just good for making mastodon ribs much tastier and keeping us warm, it also helped keep us safe from other animals that liked our tasty ribs. Since then we started to form societies and use culture as the code…Technology5 min readTechnology5 min read
5 days agoProving for Human in the Digital AgeWe are running ever faster and more wildly into the Digital Age, careening hither and yon, our brains bombarded by notifications, new technologies slamming into us like forwards on a rugby pitch. So rapidly and in so many compounded ways are digital technologies evolving that our culture too is struggling…Technology5 min readTechnology5 min read
Mar 15Libraries in the Digital AgeLibraries are today’s secular version of a church, but then, they had their start in religious institutions. The earliest of libraries and for over a thousand years, were built, protected and nurtured within churches and monasteries. Many of their scrolls and books were, naturally, religious by nature. Later, they began…Culture4 min readCulture4 min read
Mar 11How Dictators Will Use Artificial IntelligenceRussia’s savage, imperialistic and childish war on Ukraine has been said by democracies to be a battle between democracies and autocracies, the free world and the the unfree. It is. And it is the opening of the battle to come between two very different sets of values. The other, more…Politics4 min readPolitics4 min read
Mar 10Why Data Needs Global GovernanceWe quickly click on the terms and conditions of apps, with little consideration for how our data will be held against us. We all realise our data is being sliced and diced by the companies we know. But there are even more companies we don’t know, that we never hear…Data Science5 min readData Science5 min read
Mar 8Social Media’s Lessons for Artificial IntelligenceEver since humans invented tools, and evidence increasingly suggests that we actually stole that concept from Neanderthals anyway, we’ve evolved in lockstep with technology. Somehow, we understood in some unconscious way that tool use enabled us to survive unlike any other species. …Artificial Intelligence5 min readArtificial Intelligence5 min read
Mar 6Why Robots Are Evolutionary, Not ProgressiveWe are just now truly entering the age of robots. Science fiction, over 50 years ago, promised we’d all have a nice personal robot in our homes by now, attending our every whim with, if not outright glee, then perhaps, witty sarcasm. It also promised us flying cars a la…Robotics5 min readRobotics5 min read
Mar 4How Culture & AI Cancelled the MetaverseThe hype pf the metaverse in early 2022 was quite something. According to all the tech pundits, investors, news media, futurists and tech industry analysts, we’d all be flailing about our living rooms with headsets on for the entire workday and deep into the night in the metaverse. A new…Metaverse4 min readMetaverse4 min read
Mar 1Culture & Technology Tensions in the Digital AgeHumans have a very long history of finding a use for a technology other than that for which it was intended. For example, Bell inventing the telephone to share opera music. Edison inventing the gramophone for people to record their wills. But we also use technologies differently depending on cultural…Technology4 min readTechnology4 min read
Feb 26It’s Impossible for Machines To Think Like HumansThere’s a lot of hysteria around Generative AI (GAI) tools like ChatGPT, beyond the usual hype cycle of many technologies that have come to be in the world. There was even the case last year of the now former Google engineer who was convinced that an AI was, well, sentient…Artificial Intelligence4 min readArtificial Intelligence4 min read
