Peter Calthorpe is one of the guys involved with new urbanism from back in the 20th century. He recently did a Ted talk outlining his vision for how cities will be developed and re-developed to accommodate 3 billion more people and it’s pretty inspiring.
This is the kind of thing I can see spending a bunch of time working on.
Listening to Episode 1 of “Bellweather”, a podcast by Sam Greenspan (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bellwether/b-e-l-l-w-e-t-h-e-r-a-podcast-of-speculative-journalism) investigating the first pedestrian death from collision with a self-driving car. In this case, it looks s though the car, having determined that a collision was imminent in the next few seconds, relinquished control to the drive without alerting her, expecting her to realize what was happening, figure out what to do and apply emergency braking and swerve all within four seconds or so.
He introduces the idea of a “moral crumple zone”. A traditional crumple zone, of course, is the part of the vehicle that is designed to fail in an emergency to protect the occupant. The analogy is that, in this case, the designated part to fail is the human driver, and the entity being protected is the company that built the car. In this case, delegating the authority to the human relieves the company of the moral responsibility for the crash.
I’m realizing that this sort of principle eliding responsibility from the company has become pervasive in a lot of systems design. There’s a lot of engineering around making sure the company can’t be held responsible for any malfunction, at the expense of the end user; DRM comes to mind.
This reminds me about Asimov’s three laws of robotics from the 50s, of which the first states
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
I’m realizing we are really at the point in systems design where the Three Laws need to be designed in as system requirements. And the fact that it’s optional is a flaw.
Time to stop thinking we can keep the status quo?
http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf
Resilience, relinquishment, restoration. Don’t know if I’m there yet.
I’m listening to Democracy Now on slavery and reparations today.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/4/what_to_the_american_slave_is
The same questions on “why do we owe anyone? To whom do we cut the checks?” I want to refer them to the Waitangi Tribunal for practical answers.
I think we’re all tired of the America-Online-like centralization of the Internet. Various countries are solving the problem by arbitrarily cutting themselves off, and forming their own little non-Internets, but maybe cut off your nose to spite your face? But there’s no reason we all need to buy into the way social media is set up at the moment, just because it’s convenient.
Mr Sanger asks that we post our own copies of his “Declaration of Digital Independence”, which seems a little contrary to the point of the net. In the spirit of hypertext, I’m posting a link to his copy.
Source: Declaration of Digital Independence – Larry Sanger Blog
There’s a media strike that goes along with it: a
“collective pause in our use of social media, except to post notices and memes that:
- Declare that we are on strike. Use hashtag #SocialMediaStrike.
- (Optional.) Point to a copy of the Declaration of Digital Independence (preferably, your own; see “How” below). Invite others to sign the Declaration.
- Urge others to join the strike. Ask your friends, family, and followers to sign and strike.”
No Reddit for me Thurs-Fri.
About age-related decline. She had a depressing get together with friends and they were all sharing stories of aging, none particularly uplifting. And last night there’s a thing on the radio about diabetes, and I understand that, genetically speaking, it’s probably something I’m going to be dealing with in a few years, and … on and on.
And lo and behold, next morning I’m reading this, and thinking that he’s onto something. Stuff shows up when you’re ready to pay attention, it seems.
I think this guy went where I was wanting to go.
The most thoughtful post I’ve read recently on these two apparently related (problem + solution) ideas is Vi Hart’s.
https://theartofresearch.org/ai-ubi-and-data/
Her conclusion: AI is going to displace jobs, but it’s not what you think. UBI is a good idea, but not as a solution to AI. A better solution is based around fairly valuing people for the data they generate, which is fundamental to the successful operation of AI. Lots of good references to Lanier, et al.
Definitely worth the read if you’re interested in this. Andrew Yang, do you have a good response?
I guess I don’t understand the hue and cry over Facebook. The company is clear that it doesn’t, and doesn’t want to, act as an editor for the variety of things that get posted, and it’s clear that given the volume of stuff they really can’t do a good job at it. Meanwhile, there are sources of information that do have editorial standards. As a consumer of information, I get to decide: do I want to get my information from sources I trust to vet and present it truthfully, or do I want to get it from anyone?
As a matter of fact, I do both. I read things on Reddit, but I approach them with much more skepticism than I do with my New York Times subscription or Richard Stallman’s blog. By the same token, I subscribe to Taran’s Free Jazz Hour, because of his curatorial excellence.
So, is the problem just that people have an unreasonable expectation of Facebook?
Huh. Never heard of this.
Source: New Zealand’s New Visa Program Requires Positive Energy and a Business Plan – Slashdot