Paul Raven @ 16-06-2008
There’s a fascinating essay by Stanley Fish at the New York Times, wherein he looks at the way society defines normality, and deviations from it. [via Cheryl Morgan] [image by Kevin Dooley]
It’s a real ethical can of worms - a brief look at the comments thread on our recent post about deaf parents wanting to select for deafness in their children makes that abundantly clear - and Fish takes the very rational and pluralist line which states that, essentially, it’s a dilemma that will never be resolved.
“I am neither making nor approving these arguments. I am merely noting that they can and have been made, that they will continue to be made, that there is no theoretical way to stop them from being made, and that their structure is always the same whether the condition that asks for dignity and the removal of stigma is autism, deafness, blackness, gayness, polygamy, drug use, pedophilia or murder.”
It’s a thought provoking piece, and well worth the ten minutes it’ll take you to read it - and it’s also interesting to see sf-nal tropes turning up in a positive light in such a mainstream essay, as Fish uses the X-Men as an analogy.
It strikes me that the only route forward in light of Fish’s conclusion is that we need to become more accepting of otherness. Looking at human history, however, I wonder if we’ll ever achieve such an admirable goal.
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Jeremy Eades @ 15-04-2008
In Japan, the population is falling, causing a reduced workforce that can’t keep up with pension and healthcare payments. In most other countries, you’d think a healthy dose of immigration and the social payments that go with it would keep things rolling. But not Japan. They’d rather invest billions in robots to do everything from hand out tissues to sell mobile phones to hock vinegar, or just do plain old stupid tricks.
It’s something worth keeping an eye on, although for the price some of these things are going for, you’d think just hiring one of the many ‘freeters‘ that are always calling me up to go drinking on a Tuesday night when I have to write a Futurismic post (sorry, Taka!).
(image from Asahi, alas, I didn’t win one)
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Paul Raven @ 10-03-2008
Regular readers will know I’m fond of citing David Brin’s Transparent Society concept as a potential solution to the escalating level of surveillance in our cultures. [image by takomabibelot]
However, it looks like I may have to reconsider the idea in light of an essay from security maven Bruce Schneier. The problem is that mutual disclosure doesn’t take into account the amount of power you have before a transaction begins:
“An example will make this clearer. You’re stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer’s ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.
You can think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value, to you, of more information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.”
That said, Schneier is still definitely on-side with an increase in “watching of the watchers” - our ability to keep tabs on those who keep tabs on us is the difference between control and liberty. I just hope that, in light of the UK police’s increasingly Orwellian PR efforts, we haven’t already gone too far in trading freedom for supposed security.
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Paul Raven @ 16-07-2007
Crowdsourcing is one of the slew of neologisms that the past year or so has thrown up - and like a lot of neologisms, everyone who uses it seems to have a different idea of what it means. WIRED attempted to put theory into practice in the field of ‘citizen journalism’ by crowdsourcing a series of articles on crowdsourcing - very meta. While they got some pretty interesting articles out of it, including an
interview with Douglas Rushkoff in which he writes off the term as a way for corporations to get work done for free, it didn’t work out to be the bed of roses they had hoped - the dissection of the project is well worth reading.
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Jeremy Lyon @ 02-04-2005
“Better Sweets to Prove Than Sleep” by Lisa Mantchev is the story of a woman caught between men, between demands on her time, and between life as a microsleeper and the pressures of a comatose society.
Better Sweets To Prove Than Sleep
by Lisa Mantchev
Jenna retrieved four poems memorized in third grade, the capitols of the fifty-four states, and the molecular structure of hydrogen. She dumped them in the recycle bin, shuffled around her free memory and recategorized the Townsend project as High Priority.
Zach grunted above her but she couldn’t concentrate on little things like his sweating body and enthusiastic penetration with so much junk swirling around in her head.
Distracted by the look of gleeful concentration on his face, Jenna lost her grasp on the sorting process and slipped into microsleep. Finalization of the new changes. Rapid cell repair and regeneration on the soles of her naked feet. QuickDreams of Cinderella at the masquerade, frolicking in fountains and surrounded by pink and gold fireworks. Then she jerked awake to the panicked repetition of her name accompanied by gentle slaps to her face. Continue reading “BETTER SWEETS TO PROVE THAN SLEEP by Lisa Mantchev”
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In an example of 