Narratives of inevitability have the effect of foreclosing thought and deliberation. If outcomes are inevitable, then there’s nothing to do but assimilate to this pre-determined future, to go along for the ride prepared for us whatever the consequences. As Lauren Collee has recently put it, “Techno-determinist futures … are used to habituate us to... See more

The tendency to think of A.I. as a magical problem solver is indicative of a desire to avoid the hard work that building a better world requires. That hard work will involve things like addressing wealth inequality and taming capitalism. For technologists, the hardest work of all—the task that they most want to avoid—will be questioning the

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I used to be much more of a technological determinist, where I believed that the course of history would play out according to what was technologically possible, and that technology shapes our world in a strong way. I've come to appreciate that culture actually plays such a large role in shaping our world. The ways in which people decide to use... See more