So Who Edits Google?
We are only now beginning to understand why the unstated norms that shape the design and use of computational algorithms need to be made more explicit—and therefore subject to critical public debate. For now, Google and Facebook don't have mastheads or editorial pages. The names of the people who make judgments about what an algorithm does are hidden. All we have is the veneer of mechanical neutrality and the invocation of an objectivity that operates beyond the human.
John Searle and the Threat of Artificial Intelligence
Posted on October 22, 2014
in Infernal Machine
It is at the point of this speculative possibility that Searle’s argument becomes both more interesting and more problematic, for it probes—somewhat indirectly, but powerfully nonetheless—the significance of the “artificial,” a category under which we can put both “art,” “artifice,” and certainly “technology.”
Looking Beyond the New Numbers on Poverty
The new U.S. Census report on poverty and income offers a glimmer of light in an otherwise somber landscape.
Recognizing the Adult in the Mirror
In art as in life, the real adults are often hard to recognize.
After Strange Gods
Posted on October 9, 2014
in THR Web Features
Image: Peter Thiel at TechCrunch50, 2008; Wikimedia Commons; TechCrunch50-2008, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.
Thiel unapologetically commends the pursuit of monopoly.