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technology

Algorithmic Futures: Competitive Forecasting

In any adversarial contest it is only ever entropy that wins. Not only this, but the contest and competition (pick a context, any context) is the carrier wave for a logic and information metric of difference that it itself circularly, recursively invokes. A predictive algorithm asserted incorrectly that Nadal would lose because it knew no […]

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technology

Broken Machines

I’ve spent a long time now down the rabbit hole of technology, science and the conceptual ecosystems that accompany them. The extent to which these devices and machines are fundamentally not fault tolerant is for diverse, yet related, reasons of psychological and commercial self-interest quite widely unreported. The narratives of mechanical or computational ascendance rarely […]

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technology

AI: Too much information…

I am quite interested in Artificial Intelligence but suffer from the broad availability and utter tsunami of related technical and general information. This preponderance of generally useful data leads to a very special case of having to invest time and energy differentiating signal from noise. This aspect of learning and knowing in any information rich […]

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technology

Metaverse Fashion

Context: What to wear in the Metaverse? Why should we even need bodies? The momentum (and compulsion) towards abstraction is and has always been towards the progressive refinement and umbilical detachment of a fully virtualised bundle-of-experiences as self. In as much as this self is still grounded in material information processes and thermodynamic-as-energy costs, what […]

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technology

Where are all the intelligent machines?

Artificial Intelligence is moving forwards in leaps and bounds. In a relatively short period of time, we will find ourselves absolutely ensconced, enveloped and overwhelmed by the sheer ubiquitous omnipresence of AI systems and yet not a single one of them will possess a general intelligence in any sense comparable to human minds. The fascination […]

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culture history technology

The Toss of a Coin

All civilisation is built upon the toss of a coin.

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Philosophy technology

Robotic Inflection: Ameca

Context: Ameca, “the future face of robotics,” is as freaky as you’d expect The image in the mirror of rationality is the machine. The suspension of disbelief in the essential non-personality of Ameca is a function of a psychological (as much as cultural or technological) compulsion to reveal, to unveil ourselves in the world and, […]

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Philosophy technology

The Strategic Void of Technological Juggernauts

Context: Quantum computers are on the path to solving bigger problems for BMW, LG and others I am curious as to the strategy and/or lack of one here. Quantum Computing finds itself well-placed to negotiate a range of mathematically intricate issues that have commercial applications. Just as with the explosively radiative speciation of AI, the […]

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Philosophy technology

Metaverse: The Digital Egg

Context: Metaverse: Augmented reality pioneer warns it could be far worse than social media It has been said that a chicken is an egg’s way of making another egg. The extent to which the idioms of technologically-mediated subjectivity we inhabit are the primary methods of information system self-propagation remain as generally opaque to us as […]

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technology

Big Data is Watching You

Context: AI Will Hack Our Brains, Expert Says Can we shape the use, value and utility of Big Data and AI in ways which benefit humanity? I am not entirely pessimistic but pragmatic realism invokes both caution and trepidation here. Ethics. A definition of “good use of data” is subject to considerable ethical uncertainty and […]

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technology

Amazon Panopticon: the Data Tesseract

Context: A look at the intimate details Amazon knows about us It is not entirely inaccurate to assert that the most effective prison is one which is totally transparent and masquerades as freedom of choice and that, I suggest, is precisely what has happened here. There’s certainly some malfeasance or ethical impropriety of decision-making but […]

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technology

The Big Business of Disinformation

Context: How Facebook and Google fund global misinformation There’s the rub. Not only do complex information and communication networks optimally self-propagate through the autonomous cultivation of threshold levels of dissonance, error and what amounts here to a nurtured “fidelity drift”, commercial and existential (corporate) incentives in this context are quite natively oriented towards it. The […]