Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, April 10, 2017

They Call It The Cloud

"The Internet" is the buzzsaw into which the genius of already more than one generation has been poured and sprayed out as a bloody mist.

1 comment:

jimf said...

> . . .the buzzsaw into which the genius of already more than
> one generation has been poured and sprayed out as a bloody mist.


Oh, is **that** what they mean by "uploading"? ;->


https://singularityhub.com/2017/04/11/this-is-the-dawn-of-brain-tech-but-how-far-can-it-go/
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This Is the Dawn of Brain Tech, But How Far Can It Go?
By Raya Bidshahri
Apr 11, 2017

What distinguishes Elon Musk’s reputation as an entrepreneur
is that any venture he takes on comes from a bold and
inspiring vision for the future of our species. Not long ago,
Musk announced a new company, Neuralink, with the goal of
merging the human mind with AI. Given Musk’s track record of
accomplishing the seemingly impossible, the world is bound
to pay extra attention when he says he wants to connect our
brains to computers. . .
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6pmZE1Qtyw
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Kansas City
Rodgers and Hammerstein
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/opinion/this-age-of-wonkery.html
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This Age of Wonkery
David Brooks
APRIL 11, 2017

. . .

In his book, “The Ideas Industry,” Daniel W. Drezner says we’ve
shifted from a landscape dominated by public intellectuals to
a world dominated by thought leaders. A public intellectual
is someone like Isaiah Berlin, who is trained to comment on
a wide array of public concerns from a specific moral stance.
A thought leader champions one big idea to improve the
world — think Al Gore’s work on global warming.

As Drezner puts it, intellectuals are critical, skeptical and
tend to be pessimistic. Thought leaders are evangelists for
their idea and tend to be optimistic. The world of Davos-like
conferences, TED talks and PopTech rewards thought leaders,
not intellectuals, Drezner argues. . .

In a low-trust era, people no longer have as much faith in
grand intellectuals to serve as cultural arbiters. In a polarized era,
ideologically minded funders like George Soros or the Koch b[r]others
will only pay for certain styles of thought work. In an unequal era,
rich people like to go to Big Idea conferences, and when they do
they want to hear ideas that are going to have some immediate
impact — Jeffrey Sachs’s latest plan to end world poverty or
Amy Cuddy’s findings on how to adopt the right power stance. . .

Intellectuals create[d] the frameworks within which politicians operate[d].
How can you have a plan unless you are given a theory?
Intellectuals create[d] the age. . .

It also meant joining a tradition and a team. There were a whole set
of moral tests involved with obedience to the movement,
breaking ranks when necessary, facing unpleasant truths, pioneering
a collective way of living, whether feminist, Marxist or libertarian.

The 20th century held up intellectuals like that, and then
discredited them — too many were too wrong about communism
and fascism. But we’ve probably over-adjusted. . .
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