Topics with Tag: Technology

Transhumanism and the Ethics of Engineering Ourselves
Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of humans both physically and intellectually via technology that might become available in the future. Some examples include genetically modifying humans, adding cybernetic components to human bodies or brains, and achieving immortality by transferring human consciousness into machines. Are you for or against transhumanism? How might these changes to individuals result in changes to society at large?
China's Social Credit System
The Chinese government has begun rolling out a set of reputation-tracking technologies called the Social Credit System. It uses high-tech surveillance, facial recognition and data mining to track the minute daily activities of citizens and business in order to score them on their behavior. Those who maintain high scores will receive privileges like travel upgrades, preferential access to schooling and jobs, and higher social status, while those with low scores will have reduced access or could even be blacklisted. What are the pros and cons of such reputation-tracking systems?
Automated Perspectives
The internet gives us access to more information than past generations could have ever dreamed, but has left us struggling to sort through this wealth of data. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and an army of corporations have responded to the problem by building information filtering tools - algorithms and artificial intelligence systems that analyze our past behavior to make personalized recommendations of news, products and entertainment suited to each of our individual desires. How do we move forward in a world where we have more and more information?
Technocracy
What if we had a political system where government positions were given out on grounds of merit, and decisions were made by experts? This is called a technocracy, from the Greek words for skill and power. Is technocracy viable? How should it be integrated with our current democratic system? Do you think that we should give technocracy a try?
Ecomodernism
Ecomodernism is a philosophy that believes that technology and consumption are the tools with which to repair our damage to the environment. They embrace solutions that have generally been rejected by environmentalists in the past: e.g. genetic modification, nuclear energy, and carbon dioxide removal. Perhaps their worst blasphemy is their belief that we might achieve sustainability without making hard sacrifices and changing our lifestyle. What is the way forward to preserve our planet?