For the past two months, students at Christian Brothers University have been working in small groups on the Technology and Human Values Project, which requires them to “devise a merely-possible technological solution to a real-world social, political, or moral problem.” Yesterday, five different classes chose the top two projects in their section to represent them this…
Read More[NOTE: This is the second in a series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] The second episode of Season 3 (“Playtest”) is what I imagine many people who have heard about Black Mirror but never actually watched the series would expect the show to be like. “Playtest”…
Read More[NOTE: This is the first in a series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] All of the episodes of Charlie Brooker‘s brilliant sci-fi series Black Mirror take place in a near-distant future, but in the first installment of the third season (“Nosedive”) that future is far…
Read MoreTwitter has changed a lot over the last few years, but until recently there was one inviolable rule to which all users were obliged: tweets must be limited to 140 characters or less. Because a computer “character” is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme– letter, number, punctuation mark, or whitespace– the…
Read MoreLast semester, I conducted a test-run on a new assignment I had devised for my courses– the “Technology and Human Values” project— and I was, quite frankly, floored by the work that students did for it. The basic assignment is for students to work in groups of four or fewer to devise a merely-possible technological solution…
Read MoreI can’t quite remember exactly when email became such a nuisance in my life, but it must have been a long time ago now since I can barely remember it not being a nuisance anymore. I think I got my first (AOL) email address in 1994. Then, the familiar modem-screeching and you’ve got mail! alert were the…
Read MoreI dedicate a significant amount of time in my courses to thinking with students about our “digital selves” and our “digital lives.” Most students– most people, for that matter– tend to think of the aggregate data that constitute their digital selves (social media profiles, Google searches, Netflix or Amazon preferences, banking transactions, medical records, online…
Read MoreIf this were a post on Buzzfeed or Upworthy or some other such listicle-driven site, the thumbnail caption would read: “You won’t BELIEVE the AMAZING things these COLLEGE STUDENTS did in their PHILOSOPHY class! Check it out!” That would be a 100% true description, but I will attempt to be more measured in what follows….
Read More[This is a continuation of my (now numerous) reflections on the Uncanny Valley. You can read the previous seven installments here if you’re interested.] Late last semester, as a part of my department’s semi-regular Philosophy Film Series, we screened Mechanical Love, a 2007 documentary about the ever-evolving relationships between humans and robots. The film focuses…
Read MoreEvery time I try to put away my obsession with the uncanny valley, some new robot or robot-story invades my world and reanimates that fascination all over again. Regular readers of this blog will know that I first became interested in robotocist Masahiro Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley back in October of 2010, when…
Read More
Recent Comments