Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
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Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
"LOVE LOVE LOVE your futorological brickbats! Love them! You are in fine company with Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary with these." -- Paulina Borsook
"Devoted to highly rhetorical nitpicking, but it is fun to read." -- Chris Mooney
"Rather close but correct reading." -- Evgeny Morozov
"Mean, but true." -- Annalee Newitz
"Dale Carrico's skewering of the salvific pretensions of Silicon Valley's soi disant savior/founders never disappoints." -- Frank Pasquale
"Pretty breathless, but I guess it had to be said." -- Bruce Sterling
"An essential reality check for those who are too entranced by transhumanism to notice the sordid reality behind the curtain." -- Charlie Stross
4 comments:
I'm feeling I might have to retract my earlier comments about the Accelerating Change hype dying out. Just out of curiousity I went through the comments section of an article about the death of Moore's Law and say that 90% of the comments were rabidly in denial of it. People seem to be convinced that something that has stopped dead is in fact still moving. And they're convinced that technologies that aren't even in early stage development will be in the stores by Christmas.
So I'm coming around to your point about the Singularity Kool Aid. There's obviously a lot of people out there who don't want to let it go. I still think many of them will eventually but it's definitely doubleplus ungood.
> So I'm coming around to your point about the Singularity Kool Aid.
> There's obviously a lot of people out there who don't want to let
> it go. I still think many of them will eventually but it's definitely
> doubleplus ungood.
I no longer see the "Singularity Kool Aid" as an independent phenomenon.
I see as just another head of the hydra that also contains, for example,
Scientology and Mormonism, or (in earlier days) Objectivism and
Marxism (is that muffled screaming I hear from the Ayn Rand Institute
that somebody somewhere mentioned the two in the same sentence? ;-> ).
It's another feel-good belief system that dulls the fear of death,
promises untold rewards in a future existence, and (very conveniently)
provides a lever for power-seekers and power-holders to control
the kool-aid guzzling rubes.
It worked for me, for a little while. Seemed so "scientific", you
know.
(Ask Christopher Hitchens or Michael Shermer about the odds of this sort of
thing going away anytime soon.)
> Just out of curiousity I went through the comments section of
> an article about the death of Moore's Law. . .
Which article? This one, from this past Monday, perchance?
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222704/death_of_moores_law_will_cause_economic_crisis.html
(I have Kaku's new book, but I haven't gotten around to reading
it yet.)
> Was it this one. . .?
Ah, more likely the Salon article referenced there.
http://www.salon.com/technology/computers/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/03/19/moores_law_ends_excerpt
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