The old way it was practised, at vast scale, and across increasingly porous borders, has begun to look like it might be a terminal casualty. At the time of writing, there are only memories, and the work of reorienting ourselves to a more inert and less hospitable world. - Aeon
Consciousness, thought, creativity, will, imagination, and agency — once considered to be explainable only through philosophical reflection were now reformulated as precisely defined cognitive functions. And these functions could in turn be measured and compared between humans and machines. - The New Atlantis
Any of us have interacted with apparently thoughtful machines often enough—for instance, when on the telephone and trying, often fruitlessly, to get to a customer service representative, that we have gradually lowered our standards for intelligence. - Hedgehog Review
The researchers found that higher conscientiousness – the tendency to be organised, hardworking and disciplined – was related to rating loyalty, authority and purity/sanctity as important bases for morality. - Psyche
The essence of selfhood is neither a rational mind nor an immaterial soul. It is a deeply embodied biological process, a process that underpins the simple feeling of being alive that is the basis for all our experiences of selfhood. - Nautilus
My elevator pitch goes something like this: “I know you think cyborgs are always imminent. But not here yet. However, I am a cyborg. And cyborgs are first and foremost disabled people. We’re the ones who have a fundamental interface with tech. - Wired
The offices of tomorrow may have more in common with a café or a classroom or a maker space, IDEO's Sandy Speicher says. It’s all about giving people a “reason to come in rather than regulation to come in.” - Harvard Business Review
Two weeks ago, I wrote that the U.S. needed a revitalized culture of experimentation. Now I think that what we really need is more experimentation in markets, because our markets are failing to promote new ideas that drive progress and growth. - The Atlantic
"If you believe the hype, NFTs are poised to transform the art world, changing not only how art is bought and sold, but also what kind of art we value, and which artists." That's ... a big if. - Washington Post
The frequency of context-destruction is no accident. Twitter rewards high-context speech, and then gives us the perfect tool to decontextualize that speech. Twitter is designed to invite our vulnerability, and then punish it. - Raven
By producing an overarching story of life, Big History is meant to fill the void that was left by the processes of secularisation that have dismantled the holistic narratives that were provided by traditional religious systems. - Aeon
Will deep learning eventually become “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), matching human intelligence in every way? I don’t believe it will happen in the next 20 years. - Wired
People don’t have proper names; they are marked by a combination of letters and numbers, like the inmates of Nazi camps. They wear identical clothes, their hair is uniformly shorn, their food is synthetic and purely utilitarian, and their homes are identical and transparent. - The New Yorker