Category: Society
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Technology as a Salve for Society’s Gun Problem
The New Yorker has an interesting article on a private school that uses virtual reality to teach students in the “classical” mode. It does not go well, as you can imagine. Students act out, don’t absorb the lessons, do things like point out on a virtual trip to Everest that loud noises cause avalanches and…
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Are Self Driving Cars Murder Bots? Or The Problem With Just Asking Questions
When I was a teenager, I saw a comedian who I considered ancient, which likely meant he was sixty or so (teenage me was a little shit). His schtick was that his age made him humorously incompetent. He best bit, in my little shit opinion, was “I don’t understand the concern about elderly drivers. I’ve…
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Brands and Freedom
According to Substack gurus, I should not write what I am about to write. About a decade ago, I worked for the fundraising arm of a major research hospital. You would recognize it if I told you the name. I thought that the job would make me content, that while it would still be a…
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Freedom from Data Driven Life
The title is a wee bit hyperbolic, but there have been a couple of interesting regulatory developments that hint at better way forward for our digital lives. First, the Consumer Financial Protection Board has issued new regulations around data brokers. Second, and likely more important, the EU’s new Data Services Act has gone into effect.…
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Messaging and Trump, or the Value of Words
This is not entirely in the wheelhouse of this newsletter, but, well, it involves words so close enough. Noah Berlatsky has a typically interesting post on how messaging works. The takeaway is, unsurprisingly, that it does not work the way that political gurus want it to — there is no one trick that will turn…
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AI and the Avoidance of Accountability
One of the reasons the creators of imitative AI systems focus so much on theoretical dangers, such as a super intelligent AI deciding we should all be turned into paperclips, rather than immediate harms is that by doing so they can avoid hard questions about the actual purpose of these systems. Because it turns out…
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Not Everything is a Tech Problem
Rant incoming. So we have another proposed tech standard that will allegedly allow perfect privacy and security and safe social media and puppies and flowers for everyone — if we all just agree to use it and no one minds that moderation will be impossible: The group, Cult of the Dead Cow, has developed a…
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No Technological Promised Land: A Review of Progress and Promise
People who think that technology should never be regulated, that its owners should be allowed to disrupt as much as they like and do whatever damage they like to people and society in the meantime, love to argue that technological progress inevitably means that everyone will eventually benefit from the progress that technology brings. No…
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Humanities vs. STEM. Again. Enough.
You cannot make me appreciate poetry. I realize to many that makes me an uncouth philistine, and of course such a sweeping statement is only honored in the breach. I am sure if pressed I would find poems I enjoyed (W.H. Auden’s “Stop the Clocks” actually comes to mind as I write this, for example.…
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Torn Photos and Rage: What Sinead O’Connor Taught Me
I could not believe what she’d done. I didn’t even like Saturday Night Live very much. I was watching it specifically for her, for her brilliant voice and fierce lyrics. I’d loved the rage and the storm of The Lion and the Cobra album. I’d loved even more the fury and the restraint of I…