Well, the Future Conscience Twitter stream has just passed 500 followers today so I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to those who are following us and give you a brief update as to the direction that Future Conscience will be taking over the coming months. For those who say it is easy to get 500 followers in a couple of days, let me just add that we have many more followers than people we are following and almost all of them seem to be relevant and interested in what we are doing. We didn’t game Twitter, so it feels like a real achievement!
Future Conscience was created to try and provide a voice of caution (some might say reason) in an ever-advancing, technological, global society. With such rapid progress also comes the risk of stepping over many ethical boundaries, only realising that they have been crossed long after the event and with little hope of fixing any harm that may have occurred. We need more people to be discussing the ethical implications of human progress in all of its forms, and this blog was created in order to stimulate such discussion.
For those of you who have been reading the posts, you’ll know that it is mostly the work of myself with a few guest posts dotted around the place. I’m hoping in the next few months to have a few more guest posts in the pipeline, and hopefully some of those authors will become a bit more regular and provide another voice to the blog.
I’m also still trying to get a nice balance between this site, some other sites that I contribute to, and my everyday work/life/family – so I’m still trying to figure out just how many times a week I will be posting to the blog. At the moment it’s looking like it will be three updates a week, with a few extras slotted in if there is anything particularly interesting or timely that I come across. I’m also looking at doing some more feature articles in the near future, including one on the future leisure society, so keep an eye out for those.
Other than that everything will continue as usual. I’ll be trying to update some design elements and functionality when I have the time (any suggestions as to what you may want to see are welcome!). You’ll notice that I’ve added an Amazon widget to the sidebar, and you may see some other links and such in upcoming posts. This is a way for me to help pay for the upkeep of the site whilst also providing you with some honest recommendations. If you feel like supporting Future Conscience, please do check out the recommendations on Amazon – I assure you that everything I point to on the site is done because I highly recommend them.
Most of all – thank you. Thank you for following us, and for those who subscribe to our RSS feed thank you as well! It can often feel like you are talking to an empty void here in the vast noosphere of the internet; and it’s nice to know that at least some people are reading the words being put out there. Any suggestions for what you would like to see in the future are always appreciated, and any aspects you would like to see improved or changed are also welcome. Thanks for reading and listening; it makes all the difference!
Finally, just so you don’t think today’s post is completely self-indulgent, here’s a link to an introductory article about cloud computing and how it will impact us in the very near future for you to read over. It’s also got some great references at the end of the article which are well worth a look at. Enjoy!
