Remaining Human: Avoiding the Uncanny Valley

Essays on health technologies and Silicon Valley’s obsession with engineering bodies and minds, from the critic formerly known as “ed-tech’s Cassandra”

The algorithms and machine learning that decides whether your child gets health insurance coverage are impossibly opaque and complex.

But they are still embodied, even if they appear not to be. They run on silicon and coltan and copper, housed in servers that can be destroyed, hacked, or damaged. Complex legal paperwork can’t stop a bullet piercing ... See more

With the emerging ability to improve the embodied experience for all sentient beings, our species is entering a painful adolescent phase. We must realize it is no longer acceptable to coast along on values and purpose inherited from the past, without needing to exercise agency and responsibility to decide what we will work toward. We have to accept... See more