The river has been flowing through our city for ages and ages. Someone was always inventing a system or method to cross over. Since I was a child I’ve never seen a river where there is no bridge.
This is metaphorically what many technology firms are facing with one distinction: as the river of natural human experiences flows ever onward, big tech keeps building more digital innovations whereby society must figure out how to cross each bridge to artificial, digitalized and silently coded futuristic ways of living.
Then mishaps, algorithmic errors, deaths, unexpected and unplanned things happen. Some bridges not only let good people cross over; the routes are utilized by bad people too, like state and nation cyber criminals. What can we do but frame digital innovation with ethics? right versus wrong, good vs bad, helpful vs hurtful, just vs unjust, imitation vs genius, bias vs inclusion.
A rational mode of ethical pursuit by technologists is to create many styles of bridges. High quality bridges for the wealthy, low-tech bridges for the poor, generic bridges for skeptics, renewable bridges for environmentalists. And, they also build bridges anywhere. A river isn’t necessary for a bridge to be built. A bridge is progress, an invitation to journey - into my brain, my home, my children's lives, my past, my genome. And, my future.
You can see why big tech’s ongoing conundrum agreeing on ethics breaks down. They can’t agree on or decide at Google; they can’t decide at any big tech firm! Transforming humanity from our natural world of man+environment to their future world of genetically altered humans in genetically altered environments - is hard. The one side of the river doesn’t resemble the other. But until we understand their ideology, which is to accelerate human evolution through counter-natural devices can we fight for the right to be human-as-created.
Robert P. Waters
The Prophetic Backbone. an eBook on amazon.com
This is metaphorically what many technology firms are facing with one distinction: as the river of natural human experiences flows ever onward, big tech keeps building more digital innovations whereby society must figure out how to cross each bridge to artificial, digitalized and silently coded futuristic ways of living.
Then mishaps, algorithmic errors, deaths, unexpected and unplanned things happen. Some bridges not only let good people cross over; the routes are utilized by bad people too, like state and nation cyber criminals. What can we do but frame digital innovation with ethics? right versus wrong, good vs bad, helpful vs hurtful, just vs unjust, imitation vs genius, bias vs inclusion.
A rational mode of ethical pursuit by technologists is to create many styles of bridges. High quality bridges for the wealthy, low-tech bridges for the poor, generic bridges for skeptics, renewable bridges for environmentalists. And, they also build bridges anywhere. A river isn’t necessary for a bridge to be built. A bridge is progress, an invitation to journey - into my brain, my home, my children's lives, my past, my genome. And, my future.
You can see why big tech’s ongoing conundrum agreeing on ethics breaks down. They can’t agree on or decide at Google; they can’t decide at any big tech firm! Transforming humanity from our natural world of man+environment to their future world of genetically altered humans in genetically altered environments - is hard. The one side of the river doesn’t resemble the other. But until we understand their ideology, which is to accelerate human evolution through counter-natural devices can we fight for the right to be human-as-created.
Robert P. Waters
The Prophetic Backbone. an eBook on amazon.com