Technology And Ethics
ServiceSpace
--Tom Mahon
2 minute read
Oct 28, 2014

 

Here are a few tech stories that caught my attention this week ...

Fascinating article on how close we are coming to The Singularity.
Chip maker Intel predicts practical computer-brain interfaces by 2020. Intel scientist Dean Pomerleau said in a recent article, "Eventually people may be willing to be more committed to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts." Yes indeed, and imagine the Web (and its owners) being able to read, manipulate and possibly control your thoughts and actions. A society with poor education, susceptible to image manipulation, and easy to beguile with a 'coolness' factor, may gladly embrace this.

Even The Wall Street Journal is for hiking up minimum wage to combat tech's damaging effect on jobs.

Two articles recently appeared offering two very different views of the 'new world order.' This Newsweek story reflects Julian Assange's concern about of the 'global hegemony' now practiced by Google/State Dept to maintain the current US-centered world order.  This paper, by a Muslim scholar, addresses how the Rhodes Forum "Dialog of Civilizations" might help create a counter-hegemony to perceived US domination, especially in the Muslim world. If counter-hegemony means a stand against US's heavy footprint on the world, that is one thing. If it means creating another hegemony itself (as the Cold War offered a choice only between US and USSR), that should be a non-starter.

Concern about tech is now a bestseller. Matt Richtel, author of A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, reported on a group meeting that Rev. Heng Sure and I arranged at the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery in 1997, just after he joined The New York TImes. The concern about digital distraction grows, but solutions are harder to find.

At a talk at MIT, Elon Musk warned against developing Artificial Intelligence, and compared it to ‘Summoning the Demon’.  It is raising a lot of ethical questions.

There are a lot of benefits to the digitization of society, but shadows are beginning to show up, too. We need to be sure we keep a human handle on our technology, so we don't become the tools of our tools (and of those who own the tools).

 

Posted by Tom Mahon on Oct 28, 2014