If we were doing word-of-the-month, this month's moniker might be interface. I start this month's list with an excellent, lightly philosophical article exploring the idea of interfaces and corporate personhood. Both representations and purveyors of the necessities our hunter-gatherer ancestors obtained more directly, interfaces play an intricate and complex role in how we now perceive the world around us - physical, digital, augmented, and virtual. As a mediating aspect between us and our technology, they occupy an outsized influence in our daily lives, their management a challenge in our efforts to put tech's power under rational, reasonable, and human-flourishing institutional and personal control...
- And so, we begin - The Three-Faced Interface - by Brett Scott (asomo.co)
- Regarding a Balance the Triangle issue, I also posted a Perplexity overview on scalar stress this month. The idea is that given human evolutionary wiring, how might we better approach interfacing with AI and upcoming AGI? - https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/chuckmetz_brief-scalar-stress-overview-activity-7211912130109788161-0X-U?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
- Generative AI is bringing new life to the discussion of what it means to be human - In the shadow of generative AI, what remains uniquely human? | VentureBeat
- Aspects of which, at least since the Neolithic experiment began, include discussions around authority, hierarchy, and dogma - HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY | Edge.org
- As well as perennial ponderings around the difficulties of using technology in human-flourishing manners due to our evolutionary struggles with - The Distinctiveness of Human Aggression (robkhenderson.com)
- Here, another nice piece around our struggles to tame pervasive communication technologies by a species challenged by its evolutionary wiring and history - Morality in the anthropocene: The perversion of compassion and punishment in the online world | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
- And useful coping strategies when ideals bump up against realities - The upside of feeling dissatisfied with the world: How to work your "weltschmerz" - Big Think
- As I said in my post, "With lesser hubris, the equally scientific question for me has always been, Why would they not be?" - Are animals conscious? Some scientists now think they are (bbc.com)
- Which ties in with an enjoyable collaboration with
Shannon Mullen O'Keefe
, writing about simple life lessons from honeybees - The Hidden Language of the Bees. What we can learn from a honeybee about… | by Shannon Mullen O'Keefe | May, 2024 | Medium
- The most-read post of the month, Carl Zimmer's piece about how the brain thinks - How Our Brain Produces Language and Thought, According to Neuroscientists - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
- And new research on how that same brain processes away waste - The brain makes lots of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes : Shots - Health News : NPR
- Finally, one effort in the ChatGPT age to leverage the tool to curb some of our human proclivities as we continue to look for ways to balance the triangle and flourish together as people - Kenyan creates ChatGPT tool that exposes all politicians’ corruption cases (citizen.digital)
This month, the emphasis is more on the human side, likely because I'm now examining many of the human sides of the technological challenge. We often see what we're primed to see, which can be useful or detrimental. Collectively, we all see further and better than any individual. And thus, I'm always delighted to bring these things up for all of you to ponder.
Be well, Live well. Flourish.
