For the last couple of semesters, I’ve been trying to introduce my students, in as gentle and nonthreatening a manner as possible, to the idea that they may very well be the last of “humanity” as we know it. This has not been a well-received speculative proposition. In my defense, I really make an effort…
Read MoreZuckerberg totally proved me wrong in his testimony to Congress over the last two days. Contrary to what I anticipated in my blog post yesterday (here), he *DID* attempt to explain to Congress things that they (obviously) did not know or understand, he *DID* offer concrete suggestions for policy/legislative change, he *DID* explicitly oppose the…
Read More[This is the next installment in my ongoing series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] [Note from Dr. J: What follows is a guest post on S4E2 “Arkangel” from Shannon M. Mussett, a brilliant philosopher and dear friend with whom I frequently disagree about almost all things technological. I’ll be…
Read MoreOur country’s most enigmatic robot overlord, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is scheduled to appear before Congress today to answer questions about, among other things, Facebook’s complicity with Russian bots, sock-puppets, and fake-news generators as well as the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal. As I’ve said before on this blog, we really ought not underestimate the importance of…
Read More[NOTE: This is the next installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] I really liked S4E1 “USS Callister,” which is the only episode from Season 4 to make it in in the top ten of my Black Mirror rankings. This came as a…
Read More[NOTE: This is the next installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] Back in 2013, when the second season of Black Mirror was released, I was only just beginning to expand what was, at the time, a somewhat niche-market interest in the tech phenomenon…
Read More[This is the next installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] What happens when our otherwise virtuous desire for justice becomes hyperbolized, hypostatized, and perversely transfigured into an insatiable thirst for vengeance? That is the question that was first explored in Black Mirror‘s…
Read More[This is the next installment in my ongoing series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] Ever since the first season of Black Mirror was released in 2011, I have been utterly confounded by my friends’ and colleagues’ affection for its second episode, “15 Million Merits.” Reasonable people disagree about…
Read More[This is the next installment in my ongoing series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] [Note from Dr. J: What follows is a guest post from Shannon M. Mussett, a brilliant philosopher and dear friend with whom I frequently disagree about almost all things technological. When I posted my…
Read MoreIn my experience, of the people who have actually watched Black Mirror, there are two types: those who absolutely LOVE it, and those who never got past the pig episode. To be fair to the second group, “the pig episode” (aka, “The National Anthem”) is the very first episode of the very first season and it packs…
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