Author: Mike Ryder

About Mike Ryder

Writer, academic and digital communications professional. Lecturer in Marketing at Lancaster University.

Humans, robots and rules: what the Covid-19 pandemic tells us about decision-making and rules

As we all set ourselves up for weeks, or even months, of self-isolation, never has there been a better time to think about rules, and the reasons we do the things that we do.

While the UK government has imposed new rules, telling us that we need to stay at home, these rules are only ever an approximation of the ideal rule, which in this case, is the idea that everyone needs to stay at home. The issue here is that while universal isolation is all well and good in theory, we still need health workers and we still need to keep the electricity flowing and the water running.

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It could be time to start thinking about a cybernetic Bill of Rights

Like it or loathe it, the robot revolution is now well underway and the futures described by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick are fast turning from science fiction into science fact. But should robots have rights? And will humanity ever reach a point where human and machine are treated the same?

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Dwayne Johnson and the myth of hard work

Everywhere you look these days, people are ‘working hard’ on social media, telling us about their lives, their jobs, their children and all the many things they do to fill up their time. And when they’re not working hard, they’re spending their time telling us about how hard they’re working, or how much they’ve deserved the break they’ve given themselves from all the hard work.

But what really is work, and why do we do it? Is there even such a thing as working too hard?

I can’t say that I have all of the answers at this point, but I do have several thoughts…

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Online grammar checkers – Grammarly revisited

Way back in 2013, I was invited to write a review of the online grammar checker, Grammarly. I was paid by Grammarly directly to write this blog, with the only requirement being that I had to open with the phrase ‘I use Grammarly’s free online grammar check because…’ At the time, I found Grammarly to be a fairly useful tool, though I did raise several concerns including the academic implications of plagiarism checkers, and the danger of Grammarly becoming a crutch for weaker writers.

Now, six years on, I find cause to revisit my original review of Grammarly, and reiterate many of my original concerns as Grammarly continues to expand its reach.

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