Society

Called on to give an after-dinner talk at a 1961 meeting, Los Alamos physicist Darol Froman proposed a new project “without much attention to some of the practical aspects”: What if we turned Earth into a giant spaceship and drove it around? If we built a fusion rocket and fed it the moon and some damp sand, it could (in principle) carry us out of orbit. Our atmosphere would protect us from interstellar radiation, and we’d be free of the worry of our sun’s impending death. It might take 100 million years to make our way out of the solar...

by Trevor Haynes figures by Rebecca Clements “I feel tremendous guilt,” admitted Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook, to an audience of Stanford students. He was responding to a question about his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” he explained. In Palihapitiya’s talk, he highlighted something most of …

Here’s an insane thing I read on social media today: Post by @inspiringselfcompassion View on Threads The fellow who blocked the account above, Michael Darius, includes Apple pioneer, skeuomo…

I occasionally get to hang around people with real wealth, and those on their way to real wealth. I’ve notice there is a rising scale of how wealth is experienced. As your income gains more zeros, you ascend through this … Continue reading →

Despite all the cheerleading and hype, telcos remain fiercely resistant to putting their mission-critical workloads in the public cloud.

A story a bit deeper than millennials and avocado toast

Imagine a billionaire kidnapped a random person and said: Here is a camera, banana, bicycle, sundress, and porcupine; you have one day to make a funny video using them all. I’ll upload it to YouTube, and if it gets “enough” views in the first day, I’ll give you $10B. If not, I’ll kill you and your closest twenty relatives. No, I’m not going to tell you my “enough” threshold. Go.

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, righ…

Today on TAP: Why Europe’s mixed economy produces safer planes than America’s financialized capitalism

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For years, people have been impersonating police online in order to get companies to hand over incredibly sensitive personal information. Reporting by 404 Media recently revealed that Verizon handed over the address and phone logs of an individual to a stalker pretending to be a police officer who...

Email unsubscribe tools promise to eliminate unwanted emails, but our testing showed they rarely deliver. You’re better off making inbox rules yourself.

Listen to this episode from Hyperscale by Briar Prestidge on Spotify. “Humans have to raise their game. They have to be valued for something else, for something more, because we have now made machines that basically can replace us. And I think that is the bottom line question when it comes to humanity's relationship to AI: what is the value added of being human?” On this episode of HYPERSCALE, I am joined by Steve Fuller, a social philosopher and an instructor at the University of Warwick. Steve is an advocate for social epistemology and academic freedom, and supports the concepts of intelligent design and transhumanism. This mix of diverse expertise made for a truly intriguing conversation.  Join us as we explore a society where augmented transhumans are the standard, how public healthcare would have to adapt in such a world, an early example of cyborg legislation, and more. FOLLOW ► Instagram: https://bit.ly/briarig  LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/linkedin  TikTok: https://bit.ly/briartiktok  Website: https://briarprestidgeofficial.com

The U.S. State Department on Thursday announced a new framework to counter foreign disinformation.

A group of advocates sued the state for dividing Latino voters between Pasco and Yakima. Now the court will draw a line before the fall elections.

A handbook aiming to cause disruption from within during World War II has resurfaced after becoming declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). How to sabotage and disturb meetings specifically resonated as relevant now as it was c.80 years ago.

On the Origins of Social Movements by Jo Freeman

Filterworld author Kyle Chayka examines the algorithms that dictate what we watch, read and listen to. He argues that machine-guided curation makes us docile consumers.

Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them

The West should provide ordinary people the means to create wealth while supplying our military with sufficient defense capabilities.

29 Palms, California, is home to the world’s largest Marine Corps Training Base. It’s an elaborately built facility with lego-like buildings, a bazaar, a mosque, and people role-playing as civilians, spies, or enemies, complete with costumes and props. It’s all part of an effort coordinated and constructed by the U.S. military to prepare soldiers for