Techno-Immortality
Technology has now made us immortal. Stored in the cloud, on smartphones, on YouTube channels and on social media accounts, there is an easily accessible record of everything we have…
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Posts by tag
Social Media
47 posts
The Curious Leaderlessness of Modern Movements
In the summer of 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, America was raging at the death of George Floyd and violent protests took place in multiple cities. In…
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The Fame Trap: Gen Z, TikTok and Influencer Culture
Many young people in the west spend most of their lives in the digital world, hooked up to a source of quick-hit dopamine. This phenomenon has been changing brains and…
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The Great Emotional Surplus
Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.— Philip W. Anderson, 1972 In his classic “More Is Different,” Anderson describes how systems can become so complex that, suddenly,…
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Vigilance Fatigue: Why Holding Government to Account Is Becoming Increasingly Exhausting
Many people who might once have been activists now engage in political life only passively, by watching videos and reading news and commentary. Moreover, so much political commentary is produced…
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The Mathematics of Twitter Mobs
Twitter is not real life, but, since it was launched in 2006, the platform’s influence has steadily spread. The platform now boasts 330 million active users worldwide. That sounds like…
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Safeguarding Freedom of Speech Will Require an Active Approach
Without freedom of speech, true liberty is not possible. In a tyranny, those in control of the state wield absolute power: power that is opaque, not subject to checks and…
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Why We Should All Quit Social Media
In the aftermath of the 6 January 2020 siege of the US Capitol, the two dominant news stories have been Trump’s impending impeachment and the role of big tech in…
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Free Speech in the Age of Digital Oligarchy
An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that owning private property is robbery ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur…
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Social Media’s Role in the Riots that Are Shaping America
The most iconic image of last week’s events is that of “the Q shaman.” He wears a furry horned hat, his arms are snaked with cryptic cellular tattoos, his face…
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What Happened to the Mental Health Crisis among Younger People?
Before Covid-19 struck, mainstream media were constantly raising the alarm about a mental health crisis among younger people. However, during this pandemic, the mantra protect the NHS has been drummed…
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Media Bubbles and the Polarization of American Society
A common worldview is one of the most important things that hold a society together. In 2020, Americans have been pulled apart by incompatible perspectives more than ever before. Opinions…
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The Infrastructure of Deplatforming: Loomer versus Twitter
What can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite regress of relationships. Never a ‘thing.’—Gregory Bateson, 1978 In 1984, sociologists Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker published a paper…
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GTFO: What “The Social Dilemma” Gets Right and Gets Wrong
At the very beginning of the popular new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, a mélange of former big tech employees, gurus and whistleblowers are asked: What is the problem with…
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Are You Who You Pretend To Be? The Social Media Masquerade.
Do you know the difference between you and your online persona? Do you believe you are who you pretend to be? You probably know that you’re not quite as filtered…
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How AI Can Change Your Mind
Last month, Microsoft made a move to license GPT-3, a powerful artificial intelligence model built by OpenAI, a company founded by Elon Musk. The move has focused renewed attention on…
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On Fighting Monsters
Why are people so afraid of being cancelled? It’s not a social death sentence. You can see plenty of supposedly cancelled individuals rambling about the hot topic of the day…
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What Cancel Culture Is Not
If you have a social media account, you must certainly have come across the phrase cancel culture. It describes the act of collectively unsubscribing from a person, the way you…
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