At The Atlantic Moshe Vardi wonders about the consequences of machine intelligence. Vardi’s article features the subtitle ‘If machines are capable of doing any work that humans can do, then what will humans do?’ and is occasioned by the following: While the loss of millions of jobs over the past few years has been attributedContinue reading “If Machines Do All The ‘Work’, What Will Humans Do?”
Category Archives: History of Science
Mr. Panetta Warns of Danger And Would Like to Spy on You
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta comes a-calling, warning us of the dangers of cyberwarfare, of a new ‘Pearl Harbor’ that lies ahead. He conjures up devastating visions of the nation’s ‘cyber-infrastructure’ by a band of code warriors, sneaky rogues that could: [D]erail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. TheyContinue reading “Mr. Panetta Warns of Danger And Would Like to Spy on You”
Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru
Yesterday, while writing on the corporate deadliness of The Wire‘s Stringer Bell, I noted in passing, some structural resemblances between that character and Breaking Bad‘s Gustavo ‘Gus’ Fring. But, in many ways, Gus goes well beyond Stringer in bringing the corporate to the corner. In particular, in his channeling indiscriminate violence into murderously well-directed andContinue reading “Gus Fring: Breaking Bad’s Management Consultancy Guru”
Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination
I was born on the 156th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s expulsion–on grounds of atheism–from Oxford. (Thomas Jefferson Hogg, his collaborator on The Necessity of Atheism, was expelled with him; the two were accused of ‘contumacy in refusing certain answers put to them’ by the master and fellows of University College.) My birthday is also, remarkably enough:Continue reading “Birthdays, Coincidences, and Divination”
Rock Arches, Geology and the Wonders of Abduction
During the Pennsylvanian period (300 to 320 million years ago), this area was part of the Paradox Basin, a giant inland sea that dried up intermittently, leaving behind a thick accumulation (5000 feet, 1525 meters) of layered marine salt. Loading by deposition of subsequent Permian through Triassic layers caused the ductile salt to flow toContinue reading “Rock Arches, Geology and the Wonders of Abduction”
RIP Neil Armstrong
Upon graduating from high school–confused and directionless–I considered taking on an undergraduate education in the US. I pursued the application process for as long as I could, before the financial impossibility of it all made me cease and desist. Among the majors I thought of making my own was aeronautical and aerospace engineering, and theContinue reading “RIP Neil Armstrong”
RIP Sally Ride
Like many other schoolboys in the 1980s, transfixed by the awesome sight of the space shuttle lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center, by the legend of the moon landings, and by the culturally enforced vision of the astronaut as our era’s most intrepid pioneer, I had a thing for those that went into space.Continue reading “RIP Sally Ride”
Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t
Having brought up ‘intellectual property’ yesterday, I figured it might be a good idea to follow-up with a couple of related notes today. First, some interesting news: Judge Richard Posner has ruled that the Apple v. Motorola patent infringement case be dismissed in its entirety. Apple had accused Motorola of violating four of its patents; Motorola hadContinue reading “Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t”
Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism
My post yesterday on the debate on the Factories Act of 1844 was written to remind ourselves of the perennial dismissal–in the all-too-familiar language of economic efficiency–of attempts to introduce values pertinent to worker-side regulation in industrial workplaces. As noted, I had borrowed the example from Andrew Feenberg’s Reason and Modernity, his latest book in aContinue reading “Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism”
The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor
One of the dominant threads–sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit–in any modern conversation about employer-side regulation of the workplace (health and safety standards, worker unions etc) is that such constraints are invariably economically inefficient, a burden on the profit-making potential of the enterprise. The parameters for this conversation are drawn from a sparse set consisting of technocraticContinue reading “The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor”
Samir Chopra 