Emerging Technologies and the Future of Humanity (sagepub.com)

Lasrick writes: Brad Allenby, Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics and founding chair of the Consortium for Emerging Technologies, Military Operations and National Security at Arizona State University, delivers a fascinating examination of resistance to technological developments over time. Allenby starts by breaking down discussions into 3 categories, and then focuses on the third: the "apocalyptic" discussions. "[T]echnological evolution is accelerating, which has significant implications. Past rates of technological change were slow enough that psychological, social, and institutional adjustments were possible, but today technology changes so rapidly that technology systems decouple from governance mechanisms of all kinds. All these factors, operating together, synergistically increase the impact, speed, and depth of change.

Comments

tldr

[ljw1004]

What an awful article! Pompous and wordy, and oddly fixated on railroads.

Tldr: change is happening.

Re:This professor should study systemd.

[TeknoHog]

Gentoo doesn't use systemd by default. It follows many BSD philosophies but instead uses the Linux kernel and GNU libraries to make the best of both worlds.