http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b2004496-41c1-11e1-a1bf-00144feab49a.html#axzz1keb5eZxX/the-god-gap-ftcom The God Gap: http://t.co/gkEY64dU ]]> Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:35:55 -0700 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b2004496-41c1-11e1-a1bf-00144feab49a.html#axzz1keb5eZxX/the-god-gap-ftcom http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/18/study-shows-that-kids-unlike-adults-think-technology-is-fundamentally-human/ With children so easy to embrace robotics, it’s clear that there’s a ton of potential for integrating intelligent technologies into learning environments. Besides, the idea of “exploring and creating” sounds a heck of a lot better than answering true/false questions out of a booklet. Clearly there are tons of new and interesting ways to learn, and technology is, in many ways, responsible for this. Taking a deeper look at the stories the children created, the survey found that unlike many adults who see technology as separate from humanness, it seems that “kids tend to think of technology as fundamentally human:… ]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:13:06 -0700 http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/01/18/study-shows-that-kids-unlike-adults-think-technology-is-fundamentally-human/ http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_science_transfer/ “Faster.” Could any other word better capture the reigning paradox of our age? The world today—whether measured in technological or ecological terms—appears to be changing more rapidly than ever before. Our modern system for generating novelty and prosperity has stretched to encompass the entire planet, growing more complex and expansive, so that now it seems to groan and shudder beneath its own weight. In its service, some things are falling apart: Non-renewable resources are profligately consumed, ecosystems disrupted, and social traditions steadily relinquished. There seems no way to stop or slow these processes without causing immense, cascading catastrophe. The only… ]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2011 04:01:31 -0700 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_science_transfer/ http://chronicle.com/article/The-Battle-Over-Zomia/128845/ Over the past two millennia, "runaway" communities have put the "friction of terrain" between themselves and the people who remained in the lowlands, he writes. The highland groups adopted a swidden agriculture system (sometimes known, pejoratively, as "slash and burn"), shifting fields from place to place, staggering harvests, and relying on root crops to hide their yields from any visiting tax collectors. They formed egalitarian societies so as not to have leaders who might sell them out to the state. And they turned their backs on literacy to avoid creating records that central governments could use to carry out onerous… ]]> Mon, 05 Sep 2011 05:20:41 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/The-Battle-Over-Zomia/128845/ http://www.digitaltonto.com/2011/our-emergent-digital-future/ What will the digital world look like in ten years?  The trends are already clear.

Capacities in bandwidth and storage will continue on their exponential path.  The explosion in the volume of information and number of devices will persist.  Our data will be linked and most likely be processed in qubits rather than bits.

However, trends tell us very little.  It’s discontinuities that drive history.  Everything seems fine and then boom!  E-commerce comes along, then search engines, social media, smart phones and on and on.  Much like the flood that set Noah on his… ]]> Sun, 14 Aug 2011 04:32:30 -0700 http://www.digitaltonto.com/2011/our-emergent-digital-future/ http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/15/110815crat_atlarge_wood?currentPage=all These are theological questions without theological answers, and, if the atheist is not supposed to entertain them, then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them. But as one gets older, and parents and peers begin to die, and the obituaries in the newspaper are no longer missives from a faraway place but local letters, and one’s own projects seem ever more pointless and ephemeral, such moments of terror and incomprehension seem… ]]> Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:57:04 -0700 http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/15/110815crat_atlarge_wood?currentPage=all http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=4142 "The everyday experience of liberal capitalism rests upon the violent defence of the boundaries against the other that the system itself produces. That banal and pacifying phrase ‘social exclusion’ allows us to forget the material experience of exclusion and the subjectivities that it tends to generate." ]]> Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:39:01 -0700 http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=4142 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 Imagine you are falling. But there is no ground.

Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.1 We cannot assume any stable ground on which to base metaphysical claims or foundational political myths. At best, we are faced with temporary, contingent, and partial attempts at grounding. But if there is no stable ground available for our social lives and philosophical aspirations, the consequence must be a permanent, or at least intermittent state of free fall for subjects and objects alike. But why don’t we notice?
]]> Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:49:08 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes —… ]]> Mon, 30 May 2011 02:03:04 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/ A remarkable feature of the commentary on today's economic troubles is that, despite constant reference to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as well as to the many downturns since World War II, there has been little mention of the fact that business depressions have been a recurrent feature of the capitalist economy since the Industrial Revolution. But even the briefest attention to history makes recent events appear far from unusual. From the early 1800s to the late 1930s, in fact, capitalism spent between a third and a half of its history in depressions (depending on how they are dated… ]]> Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:30:54 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/Capitalisms-Dismal-Future/126659/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU&feature=youtube_gdata ]]> Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:35:42 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU&feature=youtube_gdata http://chronicle.com/article/Narcissus-Regards-a-Book/126060/ Who is the common reader now? I do not think there is any way to evade a simple answer to this question. Common readers—which is to say the great majority of people who continue to read—read for one purpose and one purpose only. They read for pleasure. They read to be entertained. They read to be diverted, assuaged, comforted, and tickled. The evidence for this phenomenon is not far to seek. Check out the best-seller lists, even in the exalted New York Times. See what Oprah's reading. Glance at the Amazon top 100. Look around on the airplane. The common… ]]> Tue, 01 Feb 2011 16:26:30 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/Narcissus-Regards-a-Book/126060/ http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ With tongues in cheeks, Rich­ard Daw­kins, Chris­to­pher Hitch­ens, Sam Har­ris, and Dan­iel Dennett are embracing their reputation as the "Four Horsemen." Lampoon­ing the anx­i­eties of evan­geli­cals, these best-sell­ing athe­ists are em­brac­ing their "dan­gerous" sta­tus and dar­ing be­liev­ers to match their for­mi­da­ble philo­soph­i­cal acu­men.

Ac­cord­ing to these sol­diers of rea­son, the time for re­li­gion is over. It clings like a bad gene rep­li­cat­ing in the pop­u­la­tion, but its use­ful­ness is played out. Sam Har­ris's most re­cent book, The Moral Land­scape (Free Press, 2010), is the lat­est in the continuing bat­tle. As an ag­nos­tic, I find much of the… ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:58:29 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political… ]]> Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:43:13 -0700 http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html (Michel Foucault, 1967)

The great obsession of the nineteenth century was, as we know, history: with its themes of development and of suspension, of crisis, and cycle, themes of the ever-accumulating past, with its great preponderance of dead men and the menacing glaciation of the world. The nineteenth century found its essential mythological resources in the second principle of thermaldynamics- The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of… ]]> Wed, 19 Jan 2011 05:32:41 -0700 http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/?p=150 Although the analysis of geek community as a recursive public sharing social imaginary of openness, and a moral order of freedom, is a valid frame to understand geek culture through a sociological point of view, adopting a dialectical perspective in the analysis of network dynamics might open an opportunity to question the notion of artistic intervention itself. This thread connects multiple identities projects and hacker practices of the last decade with business strategies of today, reflecting on the role of activists and artists in social media. Their interventions are thought as a challenge to generate a critical understanding of contemporary… ]]> Mon, 10 Jan 2011 04:22:02 -0700 http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/?p=150 http://www.slate.com/id/2280097 The number of serial murders seems to be dwindling, as does the public's fascination with them. "It does seem the golden age of serial murderers is probably past," says Harold Schechter, a professor at Queens College of the City University of New York who studies crime.
Statistics on serial murder are hard to come by—the FBI doesn't keep numbers, according to a spokeswoman—but the data we do have suggests serial murders peaked in the 1980s and have been declining ever since. James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University and co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass… ]]> Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:55:00 -0700 http://www.slate.com/id/2280097 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html Games are sneaking into every part of our lives -- at home, school, and work. Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and even the Army depend on games. and Pretty soon, you'll be a part of one. We guarantee it.

If Schell's vision seems a little, well, out there, consider this: Much of what he discusses already exists, having infiltrated our culture and our business landscape in ways that are barely recognized. Sure, 97% of 12- to 17-year-olds play computer games, but so do almost 70% of the heads of American households, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The average… ]]> Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:46:00 -0700 http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/everyones-a-player.html http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/15/secular-body/ Is there a secular body? Or, in somewhat different terms, is there a particular configuration of the human sensorium—of sensibilities, affects, embodied dispositions—specific to secular subjects, and thus constitutive of what we mean by “secular society”? What intrigues me about this question is that, despite its apparent simplicity, the path toward an answer seems not at all clear. For example, are the scholarly sensibilities and the modes of affective attunement that find expression here elements of a secular habitus? What would be indicated by calling such expressive habits “secular”?

Clearly, they have been learned in a secular… ]]> Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:47:00 -0700 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/15/secular-body/ http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html A decade ago, four young men changed the way the world works. They did this not with laws or guns or money but with software: they had radical, disruptive ideas, which they turned into code, which they released on the Internet for free. These four men, not one of whom finished college, laid the foundations for much of the digital-media environment we currently inhabit. Then, for all intents and purposes, they vanished.

In 1999 a Northeastern University freshman named Shawn Fanning wrote Napster, thereby pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing and a new paradigm for consuming media without the… ]]> Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:22:00 -0700 http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2032304_2032746_2032903,00.html