Indeed, philosophers of technology have argued that technology is the essential human activity. Ernst Kapp said that human existence is always and everywhere bound up in a relationship to tools.
In the course of learning about the flavor, chemistry and textures of meat and so forth, we know quite a lot about the difference between pork and beef. And we know other meats from animals, so to speak, where you set the knobs with respect to the flavor chemistry. And we can navigate that whole space. We can create things that would be... See more
It's easy to think of ourselves as separated from everything, but this is not true. We are as much the universe as a neutron star or a black hole or a nebula. Even better, actually, we are its thinking and feeling part: the centre organs of the universe.
So this raises the question: How long can it possibly be “early days”? How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word? How much pollution must we justify pumping into our... See more
Human beings simply aren’t equipped with the necessary bandwidth to process the explosion of information that our world has normalized.To make things worse, it turns out that the desktop metaphor underlying so much of our computing was not equipped to handle it either. In response to the increased stimuli, our Desktops simply started generating... See more
If you’re trying to do impossible things, this effect should chill you to your bones. It means you could be intellectually stuck right at this very moment, with the evidence right in front of your face and you just can’t see it.