This week’s (exceptionally long and varied) offering of intellectual enrichment includes: an argument that the likely death of economic growth is the underlying theme of the current U.S. presidential election; thoughts on the rise of a real-life dystopia of universal algorithmic automation; an account of how the founder of TED became disgusted with the direction…
Tag: technopoly
When humans fuse with apps, what will happen to the soul?
Beware the coming fusion of humans — you, me, all of us — with our smartphones and their array of apps for everything from finding directions to buying groceries to making ethical decisions. And make no mistake: this fusion is indeed coming. Or rather, it’s already here in nascent form. Just look around yourself and…
Addicted to screens: What cinema has done to us
In his new book The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies, film historian David Thomson seriously poses the question of whether our collective and alienating addiction to the multitude of screens (televisions, phones, tablet computers, etc.) that increasingly keep us buffered from the existential reality of the world and people around us may not…
On living well in Ray Bradbury’s dystopia: Notes toward a monastic response
Morris Berman may not have been the first person to offer simultaneous commentary on American culture and Fahrenheit 451 by observing that the former has basically transformed itself into the dystopian society depicted by the latter. Many people have noted in the decades since Fahrenheit was first published in 1953 that things have been moving…
Recommended Reading 20
This week’s recommendations cover the history of Wall Street’s addiction to inhumanly fast and economically abstracted trading practices; the history of “dark money” in American politics, culminating in the current game-changing dominance of hidden funding; the rise of real-life “cyborgs” via the burgeoning body-hacking movement; a couple of considerations of what it means for human…
The Internet’s corrosive mental effects: A growing problem requiring a deliberate defensive response
For those of you who, like me, have been interested to hear the background drumbeat of warnings about the mental and neurological effects of the Internet revolution over the past several years — think Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and The Shallows, just for starters — a recent, in-depth article about this very subject…
Technology and schools: Update on a techno-utopian delusion
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)…
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…
Beware the American craze for college credentialing
The editors of the always-valuable n+1 have published a penetrating and damning assessment of what’s wrong with the craze for credentials that marks the American economic and educational landscape right now. It’s all the more valuable for putting the whole thing in long-historical perspective. For the contemporary bachelor or master or doctor of this or that,…
Recommended Reading 14
This week’s installment of Recommended Reading covers: the cinematic nature of the Book of Revelation’s apocalyptic vision; historical and psychological revelations and reflections on the nature of societal and cultural collapse; the nuttiness of America’s techno-optimistic utopianism; the rise of neuroscience-enhanced psychological/spiritual training for America’s military; the possible future of art as “post art” that…