Throughout the 1990s the Clinton administration pushed hard for the universal integration of computers and information technology throughout America’s public education system, culminating in Bill Clinton’s official presidential call for “A computer in every classroom,” since, in his words, technology is “the great equalizer” for schools. No matter that it was an idea (and ideology)…
Tag: Frankenstein
Recommended Reading 15
This week’s recommended articles and essays (and videos) include: the political battle behind climate science research; the rising push for a future where urban infrastructure is relocated underground; a look at Wal-Mart’s destructive effect on America’s middle class; the alteration of reading, writing, and publishing by the snooping technology that accompanies e-books; a brilliant, long…
Technology, ecology, and the real sin of Dr. Frankenstein
I first read Lewis Thomas’s wonderful Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Sympthony as an undergraduate communication major (philosophy minor) at the University of Missouri. In more than one of the essays contained therein, Thomas expresses the belief that many or most of humanity’s basic problems, including environmental and ecological ones, can only…
NYT: Computer scientists are worried about AI usurping human control
Sounds like a science fiction idea, doesn’t it? Well, of course, it is a science fiction idea, and a venerable one at that, with roots that reach back to the early 19th century, when Mary Shelley processed the cultural fears and fascinations of an entire era by writing Frankenstein — an act which was, notably,…
The Frankenstein Economy, part 2: It’s alive!
It’s everywhere now. The Frankenstein metaphor is being used far and wide and fast and furiously to describe the monster of a financial/economic crisis that has taken on a life of its own and is rampaging through the little Bavarian village called America (or perhaps, more accurately, Planet Earth). Two days ago I uploaded a…
The Frankenstein Economy: Monster metaphor of the moment
[Note added 09/24/08: There is now a sequel post to this one, offering several more examples of the Frankensteinian “monster amok” theme as it’s being used in contemporary economic discourse.] Has anybody else noticed the increasing prevalence of monster metaphors, especially Frankenstein-themed ones, in mainstream public discourse about the mounting economic and financial disaster? I’m…