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 MoreTwo decades after its season “finale” in 1997, Roseanne made its triumphant return to prime-time television this past Tuesday night. More than 18 million people tuned in (including President Trump) and, if the hot takes are to believed, most people loved it (including President Trump). Critics have attributed the largely positive reception of Roseanne to its sympathetic…
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 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 MoreThere isn’t a University-wide Honor Code at my current institution, as there was at my previous one, and I realized the first semester after I moved that it was something I missed. So, I wrote one myself which I have students read and sign in the first week of classes. For what it’s worth, I…
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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