Signs are everywhere – there can be no escaping them. From the speed limit signs on our roads, to fire exits, and the signs that tell us not to smoke, signs can take many forms that help us navigate the world and instruct us how to behave. They also say something about the world in which we live.
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San Francisco U-turn on ‘killer robots’: Are we any safer as a result?
In December 2022, San Francisco lawmakers voted to overturn a decision to allow police robots to wield deadly force.
In a controversial policy proposal, the 17 robots currently used by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) could have been equipped with explosive charges to take out active shooters or suicide bombers in ‘emergency’ situations.
While the policy was initially approved by lawmakers, officials have since overturned the policy in response to pressure from civil rights groups.
Continue readingThe biopolitics of the bird-flu pandemic
There’s a pandemic on don’t you know.
Or maybe you don’t: that’s the problem. Across the globe now, millions of birds have died, and many more have been put to slaughter in order to try and curb the spread of the deadly strain of bird-flu that has ravaged its way through swathes of the global bird population.
Continue readingOODA loops and reflective practice
As a university lecturer, I spend a lot of my time thinking about the process of learning and how we can equip our students with the tools and techniques to reflect upon their individual journeys and so use critical self-reflection as a means to develop and grow.
In the workplace, this is often referred to as ‘reflective practice’ – the process by which we seek to reflect and learn from our experiences
While this process can be applied to any form of work, it will perhaps be most familiar to readers working in the healthcare professions, where reflective practice is a key part of professional development.
Continue readingProduce, consume, repeat: what the science fiction of Frederik Pohl tells us about consumption
These days it’s all but impossible to separate the things we produce from the things we consume. Whether it be working on a production line, or staying at home raising children, many of the things that we do are a form of production – whether we get paid for that work, or not. And yet at the same time, we are also consumers, for we all pay bills, we all shop for food, and we all send our children to school.
Things then become problematic when production and consumption start to blur, for we produce in order to consume, but we also consume in order to produce. Whether it be catching a bus or paying for lunch, even the process of working itself is a form of consumption, and more often than not, many of us will also then consume the same product we have a hand in producing.
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