Tag: Technology
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Smashing chat… or how to be a Luddite
Last week I was invited to join the Ned Ludd Raoddio Hour for an interview about the new book. You can listen to it above, or via the podcast page here. Ned Ludd is the legendary figure who, having smashed two industrial knitting machines in protest at their replacement of human craft, gave his name…
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AI vs Car Culture – Fasten your Seatbelts?
Just a typical Friday night in San-Fran. A Waymo driverless taxi stops in the street. A guy jumps on the bonnet and smashes the windscreen. A crowd forms, and cover the car in spray paint, break its windows, and set it on fire. I’ve been thinking a lot about cars as I’ve written God-like my…
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‘God-Like’ – Chapter 1 excerpt
I’m really looking forward to getting this out in a few weeks! It’s been a wild ride to write because, as you’ll know, AI right now is such a shape-shifting, slippery beast. The upshot of that is that this book can only ever be a snapshot… but this is why I’ve been super keen to…
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The Cloud of All-Knowing | Democracy and Demagogues in the Age of Data
“True power is not the strength to force someone into slavery, but to make them happily lock their own manacles, as if chains were adding to their liberty.” Yesterday The Observer published a long and detailed piece that attempted to join (some of) the dots between the ‘big data’ socio-political technology firm Cambridge Analytica, and…
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When Democracy Delivers the Abyss, We Need More Democracy
‘We must respect the democratic will of the people.’ So said Chancellor George Osborne this morning, after just shy of 52% of the 72% of the British population voted to leave the EU. A vote was held, the results were counted, and the fundamental principle of democracy requires that we respect the decision. But what…
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Hacking Just Got Physical: Real-World Security in a Digitally Dissolved World
I’ve not written much here for a while… hopefully people have caught up with pieces I’ve published elsewhere, and know that I’m basically head down at the moment finishing off a new book, Getting High. I’m really excited about it. You can hear me talking about it when I was over in LA in the…