MachineMachine /stream - tagged with futurism http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End? http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/04/opinion-fox-net-innovation//when-will-this-low-innovation-internet-era-end

It’s an age of unprecedented, staggering technological change. Business models are being transformed, lives are being upended, vast new horizons of possibility opened up. Or something like that. These are all pretty common assertions in modern business/tech journalism and management literature.

Then there’s another view, which I heard from author Neal Stephenson in an MIT lecture hall last week. A hundred years from now, he said, we might look back on the late 20th and early 21st centuries and say, “It was an actively creative society. Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation.”

]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:07:16 -0700 http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/04/opinion-fox-net-innovation/ Next What? http://jadecricket.tumblr.com/post/20446707813/next-what-nextnature-net/jadecricket-next-what-nextnaturenet Next What? « http://t.co/OgnSQIf0 - Technology is never a neutral tool. It is rather a socio-cultural dimension,... http://t.co/nZ73f2eu – quin aaron shakra (jadecricket) http://twitter.com/jadecricket/status/187368761806958592 ]]> Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:42:59 -0700 http://jadecricket.tumblr.com/post/20446707813/next-what-nextnature-net/jadecricket-next-what-nextnaturenet John Gray on Critiques of Utopia and Apocalypse http://thebrowser.com/interviews/john-gray-on-critiques-utopia-and-apocalypse?page=full There are those who say that utopian projects, while they can never be achieved, are valuable because they spur human advance. That’s not my view. My view is that the attempt to achieve the impossible very often – if not always – has huge costs. Even if a project has good intent, its colossal cost always outweighs its reasonability, as we saw in Iraq. What is distinctive about utopianism at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st is that it has become centrist. In other words, for the first half of the 20th century utopianism was… ]]> Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:43:55 -0700 http://thebrowser.com/interviews/john-gray-on-critiques-utopia-and-apocalypse?page=full Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph and the dystopian sci-fi rut. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/22/neal_stephenson_s_hieroglyph_and_the_dystopian_sci_fi_rut_.html/neal-stephensons-hieroglyph-and-the-dystopian-sci-fi-rut Should sci-fi be less dystopian and more upbeat? http://t.co/AYbbiCPu – Slate (Slate) http://twitter.com/Slate/status/183032265322934273 ]]> Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:07:46 -0700 http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/22/neal_stephenson_s_hieroglyph_and_the_dystopian_sci_fi_rut_.html/neal-stephensons-hieroglyph-and-the-dystopian-sci-fi-rut How the Internet Gets Inside Us http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/02/14/110214crat_atlarge_gopnik That the reality of machines can outpace the imagination of magic, and in so short a time, does tend to lend weight to the claim that the technological shifts in communication we’re living with are unprecedented. It isn’t just that we’ve lived one technological revolution among many; it’s that our technological revolution is the big social revolution that we live with. The past twenty years have seen a revolution less in morals, which have remained mostly static, than in means: you could already say “fuck” on HBO back in the eighties; the change has been our ability to tweet or… ]]> Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:18:48 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/02/14/110214crat_atlarge_gopnik Declaration on the Notion of “The Future” http://www.believermag.com/issues/201011/?read=article_necronautical The International Necronautical Society now entering its eleventh year, the First Committee has recently come under pressure to release, in keeping with the INS’s avant-garde demeanor, some kind of “statement” both assessing the organization’s achievements and prognosticating for its future. Both these impulses we reject.

As for the first: What would it mean to speak “of” the INS’s first ten years? To speak above them, overdub? The commentary might include an account of the distribution of the Founding Manifesto at London’s Articultural Fair of 1999; of swift uptake of the Manifesto’s propositions by the art world and… ]]> Mon, 01 Nov 2010 03:42:00 -0700 http://www.believermag.com/issues/201011/?read=article_necronautical 12 Events That Will Change Everything, Made Interactive http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=interactive-12-events This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created by Zemi Media. Find all our other interactive offerings here. ]]> Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:05:00 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=interactive-12-events Roger Scruton - Gloom merchant http://newhumanist.org.uk/2283/gloom-merchant The belief that humanity makes moral progress depends upon a wilful ignorance of history. It also depends upon a wilful ignorance of oneself – a refusal to recognise the extent to which selfishness and calculation reside in the heart even of our most generous emotions, awaiting their chance. Those who invest their hopes in the moral improvement of humankind are therefore in a precarious position: at any moment the veil of illusion might be swept away, revealing the bare truth of the human condition. Either they defend themselves against this possibility with artful intellectual ploys, or they give way, in… ]]> Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:19:00 -0700 http://newhumanist.org.uk/2283/gloom-merchant