Tag Archive: ethics

Staring into the Abyss of Social Media

We’re all having a great time, it seems – the world is a happy place, rejoicing in the mutual celebration of competitive sport, technological progress, and a Northern Hemisphere summer (and LOL cats…always with the bloody LOL cats). But hold on one moment…

The Rabbi & the Golem: A Parable on Synthetic Life

There was a very exciting announcement recently that synthetic life had been created in a laboratory through the wonderful applications of scientific advancement. Rather than my usual commentary on the ethics of this situation, I thought I would try something different and provide a spiritual parable of sorts about synthetic life. I hope that you enjoy it.

The Atheist/Android Conundrum

With today’s post I’m going to explore a common issue in the realm of futurist thought, and one that has been regularly examined in science-fiction literature and film over the past fifty years or so: sentient androids. Are they possible? What would it mean if they were? And how is it going to impact our own sense of identity? More acutely, I’m also going to ask whether or not a belief in metaphysical reality will impact our reaction to such advancement.

Secular Spirituality: Sacred acts, profane thoughts

With today’s post I want to embark a bit more upon this new direction that I spoke about last week, a direction that was going to be infused with more of a spiritual understanding and voice in an attempt to move away from the purely neutral ‘Wikipedia’ tone that some of my news posts were guilty of. What I’ve picked as a topic to start this new tone is one that has always interested me and is becoming increasingly more important and central to modern life in the developed world: secular spirituality.

Future Conscience: Taking a slightly different direction

It’s always interesting looking back at work that you have done, trying to gauge whether or not it should be considered successful or worth continuing with. Recently I’ve been going through this process with Future Conscience, wondering just how it will continue into the future and whether or not any changes should be made to the writing style and content.

Google conviction sparks debate over internet freedom

I’ve had a few posts recently that revolve around multi-national technology giant Google, both for positive and negative reasons, and today’s news has once again brought the company right into the ethical spotlight. An Italian judge has convicted three Google executives and given each a six-month suspended sentence because of a video of an autistic boy being bullied that was uploaded onto Google’s video service in 2006.