I was recently invited to take part in a roundtable discussion for TRTWorld’s Vision 2020 series. You can watch the show below.
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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?
Continue readingDwayne 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…
Continue readingOnline 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.
Continue readingRobotic consumption – what Uber’s new ‘quiet mode’ tells us about the human and the machine
Taxi app Uber has announced a new ‘quiet mode’ for customers using its premium Uber Black service. By selecting the option via the app, users can order a cab where the driver is instructed not to talk. While this change has proven positive with many users, some taxi drivers have responded negatively to the new quiet mode, with some critics claiming it treats taxi drivers more like robots than human beings.
While these critics may certainly have a point, they miss the essential fact that all taxi drivers – and indeed, all humans being – behave, and are encouraged to behave, in a robotic fashion. This blurring of the human and the machine isn’t really anything new, but rather, has been going on for a very long time indeed.
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