industrialised creativity and valueless abundance
For a while now, the Digital Revolution has been industrialising creative production: with the advent of AI-based systems, it is now industrialising creativity itself.
life in an ivory tower
The Oxford English Dictionary defines an ivory tower as “a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world”; the Merriam-Webster as “a secluded place that affords the means of treating practical issues with an impractical often escapist attitude.” These definitions also describe the apex of a Maslow hierarchy of needs. If the occupants of an ivory tower lacked for water, food, clothing or shelter, they would not be …
giving up our first prize
Eating meat adjusts how we think about other animals, could that in turn carry over to how we treat each other? Meat eating is playing a part in the various ecological crises that we are intensifying. We became major predators when we first brought down a large animal and devoured it. A prey species, we have become the greatest predators of all. Is it time that we should give up being predators altogether?
China’s One Child Policy
Much of the reaction to the recent change in China’s ‘one child policy’ seemed to focus on human rights: specifically the right of a woman to have as many children as she wants. A woman’s control of her own fertility has been dearly bought – for most of history women’s bodies have been controlled by men. In many places today they still are. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this issue has another side that needs …
false dawns
To anyone worried about climate change the announcement by Lockheed Martin that it is developing a fusion reactor that will be ready for market within ten years could be seen as a cause for hope. Though I’ve yearned for this development for years, now I’m not so sure. Our technologies are causing ecological degradation and climate change. But what is technology except an amplifier of the effects that our minds have on the world? It …