Tag: philosophy

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Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

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Henry Snow, US Labour and economic historian, reminds us that he idea of a building designed round a central inspection tower “was a workplace before it was a prison”, the brainchild of the philosopher’s mechanically minded younger brother Samuel, who fascinated by shipbuilding, undertook a high-level apprenticeship in the late 18th century that equipped him with “both a trademan’s knowledge and bourgeois European science”. Whether on Caribbean plantations in the seventeenth century or in Amazon Warehouses today, the powerful have constantly developed new techniques to control workers- and new justifications for doing so. Ideas of control perfected on the factory floor … Continue reading Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

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Do we have the courage to learn amid “Existential risk”?, a survival kit for the gloomy world

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Award-winning journalist, John Kampfner travel to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination provides a “survival kit” for a world enveloped in gloom. Kampfner’s Braver New World reveals ground breaking exploration of the countries solving the world’s most pressing problems differently and the lessons for the rest of the world. Democracies often gets paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward. In Japan, he discovers inter-generational care homes ensuring dignity in later life. He visits Vienna’s century-old housing projects where 60 per cent of resident live in subsidised accommodation without stigma and communities thrive. Taiwan’s health system … Continue reading Do we have the courage to learn amid “Existential risk”?, a survival kit for the gloomy world

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Is future bright or domination over others? Live life on our own terms

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Ancient Oracles and medieval astrology that preceded used to be the prophets of the yesteryears which is taken over by the Tech empires. Award-winning University of Oxford Professor Carissa Véliz in Prophecy argues why we must reclaim that power and shows us how.   For thousands of years, oracles, seers and astrologers advised leaders and commoners alike about the future. But predictions are often power plays in disguise obfuscating accountability and stripping individuals of their agency. Today we face the same threat of powerful prophets but under a new façade: tech.   Not only do modern predictions made by tech … Continue reading Is future bright or domination over others? Live life on our own terms

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Inflation, growth, unemployment, balanced budgets are weaponized to enforce market dependency

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Amid financial crisis, pandemic and war, Capitalism seems invincible. Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa, Clara E Mattei illustrates its fragility and restores hope that everything could be different Yanis Varoufakis. Economics is sold as pure and apolitical: scientific, neutral, exact. This book reveals the true role: to convince us there’s no alternative to capitalism. Mattei rips the mask off our economic system, and unpacks key concepts like growth, inflation, unemployment and balanced budgets to show how they’re weaponized to enforce market dependence, not freedom, stripping us of the power to shape the democratic decisions that govern our … Continue reading Inflation, growth, unemployment, balanced budgets are weaponized to enforce market dependency

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Reconnect and revive our sensorial pathways into awareness

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Sir Wayne McGregor, a choreographer renowned for his trailblazing innovations in performance. His ongoing enquiries into movement and the body have radically defined dance in the modern era. Over the past three decades, he has discovered that our intelligence lies not only in our brains, but in our bodies too. McGregor dislocated his knee in his early twenties, as he was immobilised and forced to relearn how to balance and co-ordinate. He discovered swiftly how his body could adapt and reconfigure itself when attention was redirected. Injury, becomes an accidental laboratory for understanding what McGregort calls “ physical intelligence”: the … Continue reading Reconnect and revive our sensorial pathways into awareness

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Free Will and Prediction are vital to intelligence, brain and life itself

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For some AI researchers a large neural net that predicts next words seems to produce a system with general intelligence, although neuroscientists believe that the brain evolved precisely to predict the future- the “predictive brain” hypothesis. Blaise Agüera Y Arcas, vice president of Google, programmer and founder of its research team Paradigms of Intelligence,  in What Is Intelligence, prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain, but to life itself – by exploring the wide-ranging implications. The radical perspectives on the computational properties of living systems, the evolutionary and social origins of intelligence, the relationship between models and reality, … Continue reading Free Will and Prediction are vital to intelligence, brain and life itself

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Instruments of Wealth extraction which aids the spread of autocracy

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“The magic of Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is its simplicity, and breaks down one of the greatest challenges of our age- the unaccountable power of tech platforms, explaining your online life is draining your wallet. Our world is dominated by a handful of tech platforms, who provide great conveniences and entertainment, but also stand as some of the most effective instruments of wealth extraction ever invented, seizing immense amount of money, data, and attention from all of us. An economy driven by digital platforms and AI influence offers the potential to enrich us, and also threatens to marginalize … Continue reading Instruments of Wealth extraction which aids the spread of autocracy

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Fight for a liveable planet for us, our children and future generations

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Scientists Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist and dean of National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Texas and Michael Mann, climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, may have gone over the top in their assessment of the threat. They claim “Science is indeed under siege, and that’s not good for any of us. It’s not too late to do something: It’s time to get things done”. Both endured frequent personal attacks and threats to themselves and their families, on social media and in person at lectures and even at home. Climate change deniers are encouraging … Continue reading Fight for a liveable planet for us, our children and future generations

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Know your hatred and envy to avoid self-deceptions for successful intimacy

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Love’s Labour is a collection of psychoanalysis case studies, is long awaited follow-up of American-born, London-based, Stephen Grosz’s bestselling debut of 2013, The Examined Life,  a series of slender psychoanalytic case histories, which opened the world of the consulting room with vividness.  In Love’s Labour, Grosz, gives us insight into the twists and turns of the patient’s inner lives. The woman who is horrified to find her husband having an affair eventually turns out to have a secret gladness: It’s a get-out-of-jail free card she can now legitimately divorce. After deeper exploration, these patients turn out to be Russian dolls, with … Continue reading Know your hatred and envy to avoid self-deceptions for successful intimacy

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Who Knows What: The Paradoxes of human behaviour

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Harvard psychologist, one of the world’s greatest thinkers, and cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, in When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows, explores common knowledge- a concept deriving from game theory that describes the state in which not only does everyone knows something, but everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows. This idea according to Pinker “illuminates many enigmas of our public affairs and personal lives” and constitutes “a keystone in understanding the social world”. Pinker shows us how we think about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum, it sounds impossible, but we do it all the same. This awareness which we … Continue reading Who Knows What: The Paradoxes of human behaviour