I’ve read two recent pieces which attack the tech giants—Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Microsoft—in various ways. “Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend,” and “Ashamed to work in Silicon Valley: how techies became the new bankers.”

Continue reading Are Google and Facebook Evil? →

I recently read an article in The Atlantic by Tristan Harris, a former Product Manager at Google who studies the ethics of how the design of technology influences people’s psychology and behavior. Continue reading Summary of “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist” →

ABSTRACT

In his well-known piece, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” Bill Joy argues that 21^st century technologies—genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology (GNR)—will extinguish human beings as we now know them, a prospect he finds deeply disturbing. I find his arguments deeply flawed and critique each of them in turn. Continue reading Critique of Bill Joy’s “Why the future doesn’t need us” →

In his recent article, “Why Techno-Optimism Is Dangerous,” the philosopher Nicholas Agar argues that we not should pursue radical human enhancement Continue reading The Supposed Dangers of Techno-Optimism →

Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet. The connections and pathways of the internet could be seen as the pathways of neurons and synapses in a global brain Continue reading The Global Brain →