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Technology and the Virtues: Change Yourself, Change the Future
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3–5 minutes·
2 comments on Technology and the Virtues: Change Yourself, Change the FutureWhy write about the future? I’ve never seriously tried to predict the future, a fool’s game if there ever was one. Most science fiction writers are perfectly aware of the contingent nature of the future, and prefer to think about how new technology, and the new abilities it affords us, might alter our lives and…
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The Fable of the Anti-Dragonist Thought Leadership
A riposte by Zarkonnen to Nick Bostrom’s The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, a tedious story that spends 5000 words telling us that death from ageing is bad and we should try to prevent it: One day, an anti-dragonist on a speaking tour visited a town. When he arrived, most of the town’s inns were already…
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When Surveillance Goes Private: A 2027 Retrospective
I’d like to begin with a story. I was born in the UK — in Birmingham — although obviously I don’t have the accent! My parents came from Hong Kong, but we didn’t visit it until I was a few years old, since it’s quite the trip for any family. The approach to the old Hong Kong airport in…
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Artificial Intelligence: Another Inspection
Film critics were not kind when A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released in 2001. A.I. was directed by Steven Spielberg but originated from, and was made with, Stanley Kubrick, up until his death in 1999. A lot of reviewers accordinly blamed Spielberg for pretty much everything they disliked about the film, notably its final 30 minutes…
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Initial Thoughts on KSR's Aurora
Spoilers abound for the entire plot of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy changed my life. I was 14 and reading plenty of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov when I idly flipped through our monthly book club brochure. They usually didn’t have any…
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Do adblockers favour legacy brands?
With the advent of ‘content-blocking’ in iOS 9, I run an adblock on all my devices* – desktop, laptop, phone, and tablet. Like several hundred million other people, I see next-to-no display adverts on the web. After a few days it becomes so normal to see the online world without ads that it’s a genuine…
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Sentience Footprint
I’m confident that in a hundred years, eating meat will be regarded in the negative way we now view racism or sexism – an ugly, demeaning, and unnecessary act. Like smoking, it will simply fall out of fashion because we’ll find better and healthier alternatives, although we’ll still occasionally eat humanely reared-and-killed animals. Note that…
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A History of the Future, Now Free
Two years ago, A History of the Future in 100 Objects was published. The book describes a hundred slices of the future of everything, spanning politics, technology, art, religion, and entertainment. Some of the objects are described by future historians; others through found materials, short stories, or dialogues. Today, I’m making all 100 chapters available…
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200 Years of Change
A game I like to play at history museums is imagining the present-day equivalents of past behaviour and objects. So at The Geffrye Museum of the Home in Hoxton, London, it’s fun to look at their Period Rooms and link up past and present behaviours. Take the 1935 Living Room; the armchairs are pointed at…
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Eternal Fundraising, Luxuries as Resiliency, Isometric Buildings
Mr. Miller Doesn’t Go to Washington, a bracingly honest story about running for Congress. It just astonishes me quite how much time candidates – and elected politicians – have to spend on fundraising. Hours. A. Day. I had written before about how crazy it is that we expect politicians to spend four hours a day…
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