Thought Pieces
The Harm in Merely Knowing: Privacy, Complicity, Surveillance, and the Self
Monday, 16 April 2018
Robert H. Sloan
University of Illinois at Chicago
Richard Warner
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Abstract
Current critiques of governmental surveillance focus on the government’s use of information to discourage and prevent behavior of which it disapproves. We focus on what the government knows, not on how it uses what it knows. We argue that massive governmental knowing puts at risk people’s ability to realize those aspects of themselves with which they identify and which they think of as constituting their identity. This is a current, ongoing harm that most people now suffer. The argument in outline: Adequate self-realization requires adequate privacy in public. Adequate privacy in public requires that people voluntarily limit their knowledge of each other as they interact. That requires constant and complex coordination. Shared informational norms facilitate that coordination. Governmental surveillance can, and does, undermine the norm-based coordination on which privacy in public depends and thereby undermines prospects for self-realization.
The Automation of Society is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution
Friday, 13 April 2018
Dirk Helbing
ETH Zürich – Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (GESS)
Abstract
The explosion in data volumes, processing power, and Artificial Intelligence, known as the “digital revolution”, has driven our world to a dangerous point. One thing is increasingly clear: We are at a crossroads. We need to make decisions. We must re-invent our future.
The Metaspace Economy
Wednesday, 11 April 2018
The Future Hunters
Weiner•Edrich•Brown
Most people refer to the recent economic turmoil as a “recession.” But what we’re going through is a fundamental global economic transformation. This transformation is similar to those that catapulted us from the Agricultural era into the Industrial,
from the Industrial into the Post-Industrial, and then, in the early nineties, into yet another type of economy (which we named “The Emotile Economy” [a combination of emotion and motility] and we projected that it, too, would be transformed beginning
around 2005).
Why are we undergoing this transformation?
What’s Next for Humanity: Automation, New Morality and a ‘Global Useless Class’
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura
The New York Times
LONDON — What will our future look like — not in a century but in a mere two decades?
Terrifying, if you’re to believe Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and author of “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus,” a pair of audacious books that offer a sweeping history of humankind and a forecast of what lies ahead: an age of algorithms and technology that could see us transformed into “super-humans” with godlike qualities.
In an event organized by The New York Times and How To Academy, Mr. Harari gave his predictions to the Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Humans, he warned, “have created such a complicated world that we’re no longer able to make sense of what is happening.” Here are highlights of the interview.
Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030
Monday, 9 April 2018
Michael Savage
Policy editor
The Guardian
The world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030, according to a shocking analysis that has lead to a cross-party call for action.
World leaders are being warned that the continued accumulation of wealth at the top will fuel growing distrust and anger over the coming decade unless action is taken to restore the balance.
An alarming projection produced by the House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.
Now is the time to act to stop bias in AI
Sunday, 8 April 2018
Will Byrne
Fast Company
As decisions made by algorithms come to control more and more aspects of modern life, we need to act swiftly to make sure those decisions are actually fair. As of right now, they’re often not.
