If you think of technology as the materialized knowhow of others, then what’s the equivalent for ethics? Waiting… Yes, those are crickets you hear. Which is astounding when you consider the stakes. Consider: In the April 2017 issue of National Geographic, Linda MacDonald Glenn, a bioethicist at the California State University, Monterey Bay, gave an…
If you’re lucky enough to get out for a snorkel or a scuba dive, it’s obvious from the get go. The coral graveyard below the surface, that is. And unless you’re a purposeful ignoramus, your own part in that devastation hits home quickly. But even if you’re trapped in in a world of emails, tweets,…
From our present perch a survey of the past might lead us to conclude that life has never been more absurd than it is today. Still, if we muster some discipline, we should admit that more likely than not the human condition remains the same. So, as 60+ years ago, we still prize the Samuel…
Massacres in the U.S. are like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. They just keep happening. The difference is that unlike Bill Murray, no one seems to be learning anything from re-living the horror over and over and over. (Wait, what’s that familiar definition of insanity, again?) Is anyone getting tired of this yet? Of the…
A snippet from Hans Eijkelboom’s book People of the Twenty-First Century gives compelling evidence that the herd mentality is alive and well, even in this age when each of us is implored to ‘be yourself’. True, the photographs on display are dated, but there’s little reason to doubt the trend toward conformity has changed — and plenty…
An audiophile and a cinephile could surely make the case that some of the best music and movies came from the 1970s. No need to get started on the lists. But the decade is rarely considered an acme of innovation. For good reason. It wasn’t. And yet, the anniversary of the Voyager I and Voyager II…
It doesn’t come close to being there. But it comes closer to being there any just about any other footage around. In crazy times — no, in all times — it’s worth remembering that what is good in people is precisely whatever it is that compels them to create. And to be moved by what…
Only if you’ve never seen his highlight reel.. Here’s how he deals with criticism: Here’s how he deals with personnel decisions: Here’s how he treats women: Here’s how he treats diplomacy: Here’s how he treats contractors: Here’s how he deals with policy making: Here’s how he treats golf scorecards: …
The idea that technology = progress continues to catch hold. Another recent example comes from Tyler Cowen, who suggests that the time is right to replace teachers with robots. Why robots and not an Echo or an app, he doesn’t say. He has a few flimsy reasons why we owe ourselves and our children such…
Another AI breakthrough from Google. According to The Next Web, Google’s “Machine Perception researchers have trained a deep-learning system to identify objectively fine landscape panorama photos from Google Street View, and then artistically crop and edit them like a human photographer would.” Every human with a smartphone already has too many photos not worth looking…
There’s lots to be said about evolution, faith, and technology. This site is premised on their interaction over time, and especially in these days. Meghan O’Gieblyn, in her piece Ghost in the Cloud, gives a sincere update on all three. As a Christian who lost her faith, her search for salvation in technology — and the people she finds…
There are about 18 billion of them on Earth. Eyes, that is. Peering into them might just save us. Is a scarcity of eye contact crippling modern culture, as performance artist Marina Abramovic believes? Well, it’s certainly not the only thing, but addressing that avoidance could go a long way to curing our modern ills.…
Not sure if MTV or MuchMusic shows music videos anymore, but artists are still making and uploading them. Many go directly to the trash heap and deserve to be forever unseen, or if seen then wiped from memory. And yet a few prove that the art form is still an outlet for a wellspring of creativity.…
Were he still alive, Samuel Beckett would be 111 today. Since his death, the world has become more absurd, perhaps more than even he could have imagined. We’ll have to forge ahead without him. But not without his works, nor without celebrating his great efforts to bring them to us. A toast to him and his everlasting…
Most of the time it’s best to just let the music speak for itself. That’s especially — maybe always — the case with Radiohead. But on rare occasions awe and adoration are on full display along with the music, and you catch/feel a glimpse of beauty. With the band back in arenas, the time for that…
There must be a term for it, for accepting a solution to a problem you deny exists. Ah yes, today it is climate engineering, another cop-out solution to the climate destruction produced by humans. Greed and laziness have put scales over our eyes. Even as humans gobble up the oceans, poison the air, suck rivers and…
Want to know why some Trump voters still support him, even after he’s vowed to destroy programs that keep them afloat? Want to know why some college students feel they need “safe places” on campus? Want to know why addicts keep going back for more, overdose after overdose? Here’s a clue: start with a little…
Havoc has a name — and a fixed-move-out-date-residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The tendrils of ineptitude and turpitude slithering from out of there have already wrought devastation within and without cherished borders. Surely, the destruction is not done. On the bright side, most of what has been and will be done can be undone. On…
Fake news, so much in the news, is a matter of semantics, ideology, deceit, power, money, and, increasingly, technology. Tech has a role creating, disseminating, sharing, detecting, exposing, debunking, and correcting fake news. And not surprisingly the technology is getting more sophisticated. Probably most people whose technology is used to create fake news didn’t get…
Google Arts and Culture, the site and the app, is technology in service of the human. Sadly, it’s little known and probably one of the most neglected of all Google’s properties. But since it is the best bi-product of your privacy-invading, data-mining, banner-ad-generating covenant with Google, it also (nearly) makes Google worth the price of admission.…
It was scribbled in these parts years ago that “it shall be known from here forward that music has the word’s power to communicate quintupled.” It was an awkward way of saying writing can’t connect human hearts the way music can. Now in NT Times Magazine Wyatt Mason has given word to that thought. He does so…
Our planet is so verdant with life we’re still ages away from discovering its many forms. Earth is bursting with so much variety, in so many environments large and small, that we’re driving loads of species extinct before we have a chance to even know them. Thankfully, one aspect of human nature drives some of…
We’re nearly at the 17th anniversary of Bill Joy’s warning that “the future doesn’t need us.” On April 1st, 2000, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems warned us that if we remained on our then-current innovation path, moving forever forward but seemingly without a driver, our technology could endanger our existence. The warnings since haven’t ceased, and…
According to Bloomberg, Social Media Are Driving Americans Insane. Before we dig into this, the headline deserves an aside. Because does author Deena Shanker mean that Americans are in the process of going insane, thereby implying that they weren’t already? Or — keeping in mind who millions of Americans recently voted for — does she take…
It’s pretty clear that from right around day one, the Bible was weaponized. That holds for some, not all, of its authors and editors, and most especially for some of its readers and preachers. A percentage of them have always put the word of the Lord in service of their goals, using the Good Book to…
The real world and the worst of our dystopian nightmares have been in a blender since Y2K, and we’ve been living in a messy mix of both ever since. The difference of late is that the blender has sped up and the top has popped off — and not just in the realm of politics. Wondrous,…
The message from scientists studying the effects of climate change: “climate change needs to be addressed as an issue now playing out, not something that could happen in the future.” The proof: “a survey of studies has determined that climate change has had a particularly dire effect on mammals and birds on the endangered species list.”…
We love our gadgets, apps, and Internet. We use them, they rule us. This isn’t an alternative fact, and your skepticism won’t save you. Director James Cameron, discussing the relevance of The Terminator stories, in which technology evolves to the point of logically concluding humans must die, said recently: “if Terminator was about the war between the…
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is an important story of war and media that falls short of its mighty ambitions. That’s OK. But it made news of Ang Lee’s interest in turning the story into a movie, um, surprising. Then the trailer disappointed. It looked like Lee’s idea to film in the 4K resolution at 120…
It’s a tech story and it’s a people story. Not about the downsides, the bad habits, the life sucking waste of time of games/apps/social media, nor the digital self help apps designed to make up for all of those. It’s about a company (Bell Canada) gathering men and women from sports and entertainment to use…
Things are looking down. Just take a gander at how our prospects have taken a turn since the inauguration. But the world is still in one piece, and now, before it splinters, is a good time to figure out how to turn this around. Where to start? How about with a gripping and oh so relevant…
Sublime creative forces are alive and well, and giving us all cause to celebrate — all the more because they are joining forces. Gorillaz, the brilliant love child of Damon Albarn and illustrator Jamie Hewlett, haven’t released a new track since 2011. But the wait is now over, as the band has in a stroke of…
Donald Trump’s tweets, disturbing on many levels, are a real treat. Isn’t it better to know what the man is thinking from moment to moment, than not? They’re also good for a laugh. Take the knee slapper of a picture he tweeted of himself writing his inaugural speech. Seriously, “deep thoughts” or what? This one alone…
“I continued to search and devour anthropology, history, biology, philosophy. I’m just going through the different subjects and putting all the different things together and trying to search out all the different areas that I can. It was very quickly that I found a vision of the purpose of life. I started to sense this…
Darwin's Gong Show